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THE LIFE OF
OSCAR WILDE

By ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD

WiiA a Full ReprnU of the Jamous Revolutionary
' Article, "Jada Alea EH" which mu written
bjf Jane Francetca Elgee, who afterwards
became the mother of Oscar Wilde,
and an addiiional Chapter con-
tributed by one of the Prison-
Warders, who held this
Unhapw Man in
Gaol

ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, FAC
SIMILE LETTERS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS

MITCHELL KENNERLEY

NEW YORK

1906

^'b'i^h.Ka- \o^

HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

T. M.

WHO, IN THB BXTRSMB OP ADVBRSITY,
PROVKO HIMSELF THB TBUB PEIBND OF AW UNHAPPY MAN
THIS BOOK 18
DEDICATED

" The heroes of literary as well as
civil history have been veiy often no
less remarkable for what they have
suffered than for what they have
achieved; and volumes have been
written only to enumerate the miseries
of the learned, and relate their un-
happy lives and untimely deaths.

"To these mournful narratives,
I am about to add the life of .. .
a man whose writings entitle him to
an eminent rank in the classes of
learning, and whose misfortunes claim
a degree of compassion not always
due to the unhappy, as they were
often the consequences of the crimes
of others rather than his own."

De Samubl Johnson.

Preface

Tee extract from the introductory passage of
Dr Johnson's "Life of Richard Savage" which
appears on one of the fly-leaves of this book sets
forth in a manner singularly appropriate the
impression which is produced on every thinking
head and feeling heart by a contemplation of the
career ol Oscar Wilde.

Who, that follows his ascension to that
" eternity of fame/* of which he speaks in " De
Profundis/' and watches his sudden and head-
long fall^ will not echo those further words of
that great, good Dr Johnson, of whom it may
be said that had his Uke been Uving, at the time
of Wilde's catastrophe, the whole after-story of
^^de's Ufe would assuredly have been a less
pitiful one.

" That affluence and power, advantages ex-
trinsic and adventitious, and therefore easily
separable from those by whom they are pos-
sessed, should very often flatter the mind with
expectations of felicity which they cannot give,
raises no astonishment : but it seems rational
to hope that intellectual greatness should pro-
duce better effects ; that minds qualified for

vii

Preface

great attainments should first endeavour their
own benefit ; and that they who are most able
to teach others the way to happiness should^
with most certainty, follow it themselves/'

At the same time this must not be taken to
convey that any close comparison can be in-
stituted between Richard Savage and Oscar
Wilde, either in point of capacity and perform-
ance, or of character, or indeed, except in re-
spect of their vicissitudes, of career. It may,
however, be of literary interest to observe one
or two point^of similitude in the characters of
these twtfmen^

One reads of Richard Savage as to his choice
of friends :

" His time was spent in prison for the most
part in study, or in receiving visits ; but some-
times he diverted himself with the conversation
of criminals ; for it was not pleasing to him to
be much without company ; and though he was
very capable of a judicious choice, he was often
contented with the first that offered."

It will be seen in the course of this book that
even in prison Oscar Wilde took pleasure in the
society and conversation of criminals. " The
smaller natures and the meaner minds" still
appealed to him, and he underwent punishment
rather than forego their whispered exchange of
words.

And it will further be seen in the narrative

viii

Prefeicc

of his prison life how truly it might be written
of him what Dr Johnson wrote of Savage :

"... But here, as in every other scene of his
life, he made use of such opportunities as oc-
curred to him of benefiting those who were more
miserable than himself, and was always ready
to perform any office of humanity to his fellow-
prisoners.** And, generally, of both it is equally
true, that :

'' Whatever was his predominant incUnation,
neither hope nor fear hindered him from com-
plying with it ; nor had opposition any other
effect than to heighten his ardour, and irritate
his vehemence."

With equal appositeness can the moral which
Dr Johnson draws from his narrative be ap-
plied to this story also :

" This relation will not be wholly without its
use, if those who languish under any part of
his sufferings shall be enabled tq fortify their
patience by reflecting that they feel only those
aflBictions from which his abilities did not
exempt him ; or those who, in confidence of
superior capacities or attainments, disregarded
the common maxims of Ufe, shall be reminded
that nothing will supply the want of prudence ;
and that negligence and irregularity long con-
tinued will make knowledge useless, wit ridicu-
lous, and genius contemptible."

It is not, indeed, to point afresh this moral

Preface

that the present book has been written. The age
desiderates no such lessons, resents them rather.
Life is to-day ordered by a reconcilement of
inclination and interest with the requirements
of the written and unwritten laws. He sets out
on a futile task who seeks to teach conduct from
example however striking, for our present in-
dividualism will brook no such guidance. The
purpose of this book is another and a threefold
one. It is to give an authoritative record of the
career of a remarkable man, of remarkable gifts
and achievements; it is to give an account of
the author's books and other works to that large
section of the world which ignores his writings,
which, Uke ninety-nine out of every htmdred
Frenchmen, for instance, has heard of his at-
tainder, but knows nothing of bis distinction ;
it is further to remove the false impressions, the
misstatements of fact, the lying rumours, which,
although the grave in Bagneux churchyard
closed upon him only one bare lustre since, have
gathered roimd his name and story in a cloud
of misrepresentation of astonishing magnitude.
It is, indeed, this last purpose which may be
allowed to plead the opportunity of the present
pubUcation. It is now not too late to establish
fact, to refute falsehood and to present a story
freed from the supercharges of error or of maUce.
These floating rumours have not yet had the
time to come together, to coagulate, and to

Preface

ciystallise. Rumour can yet be unmasked as
rumour^ legend has not yet hardened into
history, posthumous pasquinade has not yet
dried on the tombstone.

It was one of the dead wit's sayings that of all
the disciples of a man it is always Judas who
writes his biography. In the present instance
this paradox has less truth than ever. The
writer was in no sense the disciple of Oscar
Wilde ; he was indeed as strongly antagonistic
to most of his principles, ethical, artistic, and
philosophical, as he was warmly disposed to him
for his many endearing qualities and captivating
graces. His qualifications arise from the facts
that for the period of sixteen years preceding
Oscar Wilde's death he was intimately ac-
quainted with him, that his friendship with him
—of which elsewhere a true record exists — ^was
continuous, and uninterrupted save by that act
of God which puts a period to all human com-
panionships, that he was with him at times
when all others had withdrawn, and that for
the very reason that he was not in sympathy with
any of the affectations which towards others
Oscar Wilde used to assimie, the man as he truly
was, the man as God and Nature had made him,
was perhaps better known to him than to most of
his other associates. The method of treatment
which was adopted in that earUer record, to which
reference has been made above, being no longer

Preface

imperative here, has been abandoned, with all
the more alacrity on the part of the author that
he has ever been in complete concordance with
the general preference of objective to subjective
treatment in the matter of biography. To-day,
what three years ago was utterly impossible, he
may 5aeld to his own incUnations, because to-day
it has become admissible that a biography of
Oscar Wilde can be written and made public.
The writer has no longer to seek how to arouse
interest in his subject through the graduated
emotions of curiosity, pity, amazement and
sympathy. It is open to him to record facts,
without having to paUiate the offence of so re-
cording them by an exposition of their incidence
upon others. The upward cUmb, the attain-
ment, the joys of conquest, the catastrophe,
the precipitation, and the horrors of the abyss
may now be depicted upon his canvas in plain
fashion. The reader shall see them as they
were ; he shaU no longer be coaxed by a cimning
ehcitation of his sympathy for the teller of the
story to Usten to a tale against which prejudice,
the voice of pubUc opinion, and his own con-
ception of what it is seemly and expedient for
him to hear are ever prompting him to close

his ears.

Robert Harborough Sherard.

January 14IA, 1906.

zii

CONTENTS

Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Cbapxer
Charter yii
Chapter viii
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter xii
Chapter xiii
Chapter xiv
Chapter xv
Chapter xvi
Chapter xnt
Chapter xtiii

^^''ttMDIX
BtlUOGRAPBY

hutx

II
III

▼1

X
XI

63
83

lOI

"S
'59
192
224

266
282
314
347
370
386
403

427
449
46s

xui

List of Illustrations

Reading Gaol . . . .

Fadngpagt

'377

Paul Adam . . . . .

403

MONS. DUPOIRIXR . . . .

417

Bedroom in the Hotel d'Alsace .

419

Bill at the Hotel d'Alsace

•»

4«i

Death Certificate — Oscar Wilde

4*3

Madame Dupoirisr .

»i

4*5

Oscar Wilde's Grave

4*6

XVI

The Life of Oscar Wilde

CHAPTER I

Tbe Neoewty of carefully tradng Oscar V^ilde's Descent — ^The
Raal Date of his Birth— Ptobable Cause of the Error— His
Admiwion to fiCr Carson — ^His Distinguished Kinships — His
Early Tastes — Early Successes — Alcohol as a Preserver of
life — ^PoastUe Consequences of a Dangerous Delusion —
William Wilde's Skill as a Surgeon— "The Man whose
Throat he Cut " — ^Another Famous Operation — ^The
Voyage of Th$ Crusad$r—A Successful First Book— His
First Professional Earnings — ^What he did with them —
He Fannds a Hospital — His Noble Charity — The Royal
Victoria Ejre and Ear Hospital — Honours and Knight-
hood— As a Land-Owner — ^His Literary Labours — ^Tri-
boles to his Surgical Skill— "The Father of Modem
Otology*'— A Wile's Recognition— Other Traits of his
Character.

When Nature has bountifully endowed a man
with every gracious gift which shoidd ensure for
faiin success and felicity in Ufe ; when she has
made him the fit subject for the boundless
admiration or the unrestrained envy of his con-
temporaries, and when this favoured and fortim-
ate man suddenly discloses leanings, propensities,
nstincts, which, rapidly developing into passions
he appears utterly powerless to bridle, precipitate
him amidst the exuberant exultation of his

The Life of Oscar Wilde

enemies and the stone-eyed dismay of his friends
into an abyss of disgrace and misery, it becomes
more particularly the duty of an equitable bio-
grapher to inquire if either heredity, or parental
example, or early training and environment can
in any degree help the world to understand the
formidable ph3rsiological problem, how in one
and the same man can be aUied, supreme in-
teUigence with reckless imprudence, a remark-
able respect for society with an utter defiance
of social observances, and the most refined
hedonism with a taste for the coarsest frequent-
ations.

In the case of Oscar Wilde, the problem,
when his descent and kinship have been studied,
becomes even more intricate and perplexing.
For while in his immediate parentage will be
discovered people whose incontestable genius
was imited, as is so often the case, with pro-
nounced moral degeneracy, his ascending Unes,
traced back to remote generations, display such
solid qualities of sane normahty and civic
excellence, that this tmhappy man's aberration
must appear one of those malignant, morbid
developments which alarm and confound the
psychologist when they unexpectedly produce
themselves in a man's mentaUty, no less than
as by the sudden development in the body of

The Life of Oscar Wilde

malignant and morbid growths the practitioner
is confounded and alarmed.

It therefore becomes necessary, before pro-
ceeding to the account of the strange vicissitudes
of his Ufe^ to investigate with more than usual
care^ his descent and afi&nities. In this way
akme can it be hoped that some hght may be
thrown upon the disquieting problem which his
career discloses. It is an investigation, which,
when the laws of atavism shall, with the progress
of science^ be better understood, may enable an
enlightened posterity to judge a most remarkable
man, in many wa3rs an ornament to humanity,
with the justice which was refused to him in his
lifetime, and will continue to be refused to his
memory as long as the mediaeval obscurantism,
from which we are only just beginning to emerge,
still enswathes the minds of men.

So important is the object to be attained by
this investigation — for what purpose can tran-
scend the attainment of justice ? — ^that if in its
com:se personal considerations are ousted, and
the pious reverence due to the dead may appear
to be disregarded, these sacrifices cannot but
be considered as imperatively imposed.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was
bom at No. i Merrion Square, in the city of Dub-
lin, on the i6th October 1854. So great a part

The Life of Oscar WUde

of the task of telling the story of his life consists
in correcting the mistakes of those who have
written about him, in refuting imf air aspersions
on his character, and in nailing venomous Ues to
the counter of pubUc opinion, that particular
attention may be called to the date of his birth.
In such biographical notices of him as exist,
the year in which this unhappy man was ushered
into a world where he was to suffer so greatly
is given as 1856. He was not bom in 1856, but
two years earUer. As this narrative proceeds
negations of far greater importance will have to
be put upon record. His Ufe, indeed, Uke that
of many men who have been made the victims
of the unreasoning hatred of his countr5mien,
might be almost told in a series of denials of cur-
rent lies concerning his character and his deeds.
As to the particular inaccuracy, however, to
which attention is drawn above, it probably
arose from his own misstatement. He professed
an adoration for youth ; his works contain many
almost rhapsodical eulogies of physical and
mental inunaturity; and no doubt that as he
himself drew nearer to what he satirised in his
plays as " the usual age," he gave as the year
of his birth a date which made him appear two
years younger than he really was. A friend of
his, on one occasion, endeavoured to point out

The Life of Oscar Wilde

to him that a man might derive far greater
satisfaction in giving out his age as more ad-
vanced than it really was^ in posturing as old
in years while yowiger in fact, in hugging to
his heart the secret reserve of days. But he
refused to admit it.

In his cross-examination by Mr Carson during
the trial of Lord Queensberry he was forced to
admit the truth as to the date of his birth. The
following remarks were then exchanged between
the prosecutor and the Marquess's coimsel :

•' Mr Carson : ' You stated your age as thirty-
nine. I think you are over forty ? '

**The Witness : ' I am thirty-nine or forty.
You have my birth-certificate and that setties
the matter.'

** Mr Carson : ' You were bom in 1854 — that
makes you over forty ? ^
"The Witness: 'Ahl'"
This " Ah I " sounded like a sarcastic note of
admiration for the barrister's skill in arithmetic.
How it was calculated to wound the defending
counsel will be indicated later.

For months before Oscar Wilde was bom his
mother had eamestiy desired that the child
should be a girl.^ She often expressed her con-

* This tact, like every other fact recorded in this book, is
OQ nnimpeschable authority.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

viction that a daughter was going to be bom to
her. She used to tell friends of the things slie
was going to do " after my little girl is bom,"
and used to discuss the education she proposed to
give to her daughter. When Oscar was bom, her
disappointment was great. She refused to admit
that her new child was a boy. She used to treat
him, to speak of him as a girl, and as long as it was
possible to do so, she dressed him like one. To
pathologists these facts will appear of importance.

Oscar Wilde was the second son and child,
issue of the marriage between William Robert
Wills Wilde, ocuhst and otologist (1815-1876),
and of Jane Francesca Elgee, poetess and pam-
phleteer (1826-1896), which was celebrated in
DubUn in 1851.

For his parents he ever felt the deepest af-
fection and respect. For his mother in parti-
cular this affection reached the degree of vener-
ation. In filial piety and love he gave a noble
example to himianity.

The feelings which he entertained towards his
mother and father are expressed in language of
lofty eloquence in the book, " De Profundis,"
which he wrote while a prisoner in Reading Gaol,
during the last six months of his confinement
there. He has referred to his mother's death,
and he adds :

The Life of Oscar Wilde

" No one knew how deeply I loved and

honoured her. Her death was terrible to me ;

but I, once a lord of language^ have no words in

which to express my anguish and my shame.

She and my father had bequeathed me a name

they had made noble and honoured^ not merely

in hterature, art, archaeology, and science, but

in the pubUc history of my own coimtry, in its

evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that

name eternally. I had made it a low byword

among low people. I had dragged it through

the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they

might make it brutal, and to foes that they might

turn it into a s3nionym for folly. What I suffered

then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write, or

paper to record. My wife, alwa3rs kind and

gentle to me, rather than that I should hear

the news from indifferent Ups, travelled, ill as

she was, all the way from Genoa to England to

break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable,

so irredeemable, a loss.''

Mr WiUiam Wilde (afterwards. Sir WiUiam
Wilde), the surgeon, was a product of that
tntermixture of races in Ireland of which, speak-
ing at a meeting of the British Association held
in Belfast, he said : '' I think that there cannot
be a better fusion of races than that of the Saxon
with the Celt." His grandfather, Ralph Wilde,

The Life of Oscar WUde

was the son of a Durham business-man^ and to-
wards the middle of the eighteenth century was
sent over to Ireland to seek his fortunes. The
region which was selected for him for the exer-
cise of his abiUty was that Connaught which
Cromwell's soldiers described as the alternative
to Hell^ . . Here, after a while, he became
land-agent to the Sandford family. He settled
in Castlerea, in the county of Roscommon, where
he married a Miss O'Flyn, the daughter of a
very ancient Irish family which gave its name
to a district in Roscommon, still known as
O'Flyn's G)imty. Ralph Wilde had several
children. One of them, Ralph Wilde, who was
a distinguished scholar, and who like his grand-
nephew, Oscar Wilde, won the distinction of the
Berkeley Gold Medal at Trinity College, Dublin^
became a clergyman ; another, Thomas Wilde,
was a country physician. This Thomas Wilde
married a Miss F3ain, who was related by descent
to the eminent famiUes of Surridge and Ouseley
of Dunmore in the coimty of Galway. The
Ouseleys were most distinguished people. Sir
Ralph Ouseley, Bart., who was a very famous
Oriental scholar, was British Ambassador to
Persia. His brother, Sir WiUiam Ouseley, was

1 " To Hell or Connaught '' was the alternative proposed by
the EngUah invaders to the Irish peasants whom they hunted
ofE their lands like wild beasts.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

secretary to Lord Wellesley in India. General
Sir Ralph Ouseley won great distinction in the
Peninsular War. His brother was a famous
preacher and writer of theological works^ of
which the most famous is the book entitled
" Old Christianity/' Of this kinsman Oscar
Wilde used to relate many anecdotes. He ap-
peared to be much impressed by the sonority
and suggestiveness of his name : Gideon Ouseley.
On one occasion speaking of titles of novels he
recommended to a friend to write a book of
which the hero should bear the name of '' Gideon
Onseley/' and to use the hero's name as the
title of the story. He declared that a book with
sach a title could not fail to appeal to the pubUc.

Gideon Ouseley, Methodist, was the John
Wesley of Ireland. His sermons in the Irish
language, addressed to people at the fairs and
markets, are still preserved in the memory of
people Uving in the western province from
hearsay from their parents.

WiUiam Robert Wills Wilde was the son of Dr
Thomas Wilde by his marriage with Miss Fynn.
He was bom in Castlerea in 1815, and received
his education at the Royal School, Banagher.
It is, however, reported of him that '' fishing
occupied more of his attention than school
studies, for which he had an admirable teacher

The Life of Oscar WUde

in the person of Paddy Walsh^ afterwards im-
mortalised by the pupil in his Irish " Poptdar
Superstitions."

In the DubUn University Magazine the follow-
ing account is given of youthful tastes which
led to studies of which in later Uf e he was to
make such excellent use.

** The deUght of the fisher lad was to spend his
time on the banks of the lakes and rivers within
his reach^ talk Irish with the people, and Usten
to the recital of the fairy legends and tales ; his
knowledge of which he so well turned to account
in the ' Irish Popular Superstitions.' His taste
for antiquarian research was early exhibited, and
much fostered by his repeated examinations of
the cahirs, forts and caves of the early Irish
which exist in the vicinity of Castlerea, as well
as by visits to the plain of Ruthcragan, the site
of the great palace and cemetery of the chieftains
of the West. In the district aroimd were castles,
whose legends he learned, patterns, where he
witnessed the strange mixture of pilgrimage,
devotion, fun and froUc ; cockfights for which
Roscommon was then famous ; and the various
superstitions and ceremonies connected with the
succession of the festivals of the season — ^all
these made a deep impression on the romantic
nature of young Wilde, and many of them have

The Life of Oscar Wilde

been handed down to posterity by his facile
I>en."

His professional studies commenced in 1832.
As a medical student he acted as cUnical clerk
to Dr Evory Kennedy in the Lying-In-Hospital,
and obtained the annual prize there against
several English and Irish competitors. In study-
ing for this examination he so overworked him-
self that his health broke down^and afever setting
in his hfe was for some time despaired of. He
was actually suffering from the fever which went
so nigh to kill him, on the very day of the ex-
amination. The case, indeed, was despaired of,
until Dr Robert Greaves having been sent for,
an hourly glass of strong ale was prescribed as
the only remedy from which any results might
be expected. It was held at the time that it
was, indeed, the administration of this stimulant
which saved his hfe. The idea was no doubt
an erroneous one, according to modem medical
science, and the delusion may very possibly have
been the cause of much subsequent mischief in
the yotmg man's family. In a household the
head of which attributes the saving of his hfe
to the use of alcohol in copious doses the practice
of temperance will naturally enough be looked
for in vain ; and it is no doubt at home that those
habits of drinking were fostered which were to

The Life of Oscar Wilde

make such havoc in the Uves of WilUam Wilde's
two sons. As to which it should be added here
that although Oscar Wilde was in no sense a
hard drinker^ and never by his most intimate
friends was once seen in a state of intoxication,
it is on record that every single foolish and mad
act which he did in his Ufe, acts which had for
him the most disastrous consequences, was done
under the influence of Uquor. It is one of the
most damnable qualities of alcohol that where
in a man any morbid tendency either physical
or moral exists, which, sober, he can keep under
complete control, the use of strong drink will
bring it to the siuiace. The French doctors say
of alcohol that it gives the coup de fouet (the lash
of the whip) to any disease either of the body
or of the brain which may be present in a sub-
acute state in a man who indulges in strong
drink. No doubt that, because in his home in
Merrion Square, Oscar Wilde had always heard
the virtues of alcohol celebrated as a drug which
on a famous occasion had saved his father's
Ufe, he did not attach importance to the teach-
ings of later and more advanced science, which
would have taught him that in his case the
poison might produce results the most disastrous.
William Wilde is still remembered as a surgeon
of particular resource and courage. Even as a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

medical apprentice he displayed these qualities.
It is related of him on reaching the parish church
in Cong^ in the County Mayo, one Sunday
morning, he found the place in a state of huge
commotion. It appeared that a small boy of
about five years of age, having swallowed a piece
of hard boiled potato, which had stuck in his
throat, was in the act of choking. The young
medical student, with the readiness which after-
wards distinguished him amongst his contem-
poraries, saw at a glance that an immediate
operation must be effected if the child's hfe was
to be saved. He happened to have a pair of
scissors in his pocket ; he was fortimately not
restrained by the modem terror of using any
instrument which had not been rendered anti-
septic ; and he boldly cut into the boy's throat.
The operation was entirely successful, and the
child recovered. He may be Uving still, for
when he was last heard of, in Philadelphia in
1875, he was a middle-aged man, who took a
particular pride and pleasure in showing people
a scar on his neck " where," as he used to say,
" the famous Sir WiUiam Wilde of Dublin cut
my throat." It was with similar readiness that
Sir WiUiam once saved the sight of a Dublin
fisherman, who was brought to him with a
darning-needle embedded up to the head in his

The Life of Oscar Wilde

right eye. The flapping of a sail in which the
needle was sticking had driven it in with terrible
force. An ordinary operation was out of the
question ; there was not enough of the head
protruding to allow of any hold being got on it
with a forceps by which it might have drawn
from its place. The man was suffering terrible
agony. Sir WiUiam saw at once what was the
only means of extracting the needle. He sent
for a powerful electro-magnet, by the help of
which in the shortest time the steel bar was
extracted. There are on record many similar
instances of his energy, courage and fertiUty of
resource.

Already as a yoimg man he distinguished
himself in the field of letters. While still a
medical student he sailed in charge of a sick
gentleman on board the yacht Crusader, visiting
many places in the Mediterranean and in the
East, during a cruise which lasted many months.
The account of this cruise he published on his
return to Ireland. He fotmd in the Messrs
Ciury ready and Uberal pubUshers. For the
copyright of this yoimg man's book they paid
him a sum of ^^250. The speculation was a
profitable one for them. The first edition con-
sisted of 1250 copies of the book, which was
issued in two volumes at 28s. This edition was

The Life of Oscar Wilde

sold out immediately ; a second edition was as
rapidly disposed of ^ and other editions followed.
The book has long since been out of print.

The young man continued his medical studies
in London^ Berlin and Vienna, and finally
started in medical practice in July 1841, selecting
as special branches, those of oculist and otologist.
He took as the motto of his professional career,
the words : " Whatever thou hast to do, do it
with all thy might." His reputation was already
so good, that in the first year of his practice he
earned in professional fees the sum of £400, which
it appears, is an amount very rarely reached by
the fees of a surgeon in his first year.

This money he devoted in its entirety to the
charitable purpose of founding a hospital where
the poor could be treated for eye and ear dis-
eases. At that time no such institution existed
in the Irish capital. He did more than this.
He appUed the first thousand pounds of his
professional earnings to his noble purpose. To
him in this manner the city of DubUn and the
whole country of Ireland owe the foundation of
St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital,^ which for sixty-
four years has rendered such inestimable services
to the suffering Irish poor, and which increases

'Since its amalgamation with the National Eye and Ear
Infirmary, Molesworth Street, Dublin, this institution has
become known as the Royal ^^ctoria Eye and Ear Hospital.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in usefulness every year of its existence. The
last annual report gives a record of benevolent
activity which few hospitals, which started with
resources so meagre, can show. It is a noble
institution, the foundation stone of which was
the noble sacrifice of a noble man. The follow-
ing extract from the first annual report, issued
in 1844, gives an interesting accoimt of its first
establishment.

" Although most of the large hospitals in this
city and the several infirmaries, poorhouses, and
other institutions in Ireland which afford indodr
medical rehef admit patients labouring under
affections of the organs of sight and hearing
there has not up to the present period existed
in this coimtry any special hospital for treating
the diseases of the eye and ear.

'* The want of such an estabUshment, upon a
scale so extensive as to afford general reUef,
has long been felt by the poor, and is generally
acknowledged by the upper classes of society.
.... In the year 1841 a dispensary for
treating the diseases of these organs was estab-
Ushed in South Frederick Lane, and supported
by its founder, Sir William Wilde for twelve
months ; at the end of which time, finding the
number of apphcants and the consequent ex-
penditure far exceeding what was originally con-

The Life of Oscar Wilde

templated, or what could be supported by in-
dividual exertion, and not wishing to apply for
public aid for the sum required to defray its
expenses, he determined to try the experiment
of making it support itself, by a monthly sub-
scription from each of the patients. This plan
succeeded fully, and since September 1842 the
patients have each paid a small monthly sum
during the period of their attendance, which has
defrayed the expenses of the medicine. In this
way, 1056 persons were treated during the year
ending September 1843, and the total nimiber
of patients relieved with medicine, medical ad-
vice, or by operation, from the commencement
of that institution to the ist March 1844, was
2075. Paupers have, however, at all times
recdved advice and medicine gratuitously. The
sum paid by each patient is but sixpence per
month, and this system of partial payments has
been found to work exceedingly well. It has
produced care, regularity and attention, and in-
duced a spirit of independence among the lower
orders of society worthy of countenance and
support, while the annual sum of £50 received
in this way is in itself a sufficient guarantee. . .
that its benefits are appreciated by the poor,
numbers of whom seek its advantages from
distant parts of the coimtry."
B 17

The Life of Oscar WUde

Through a Mr Grimshaw, a dentist, William
Wilde obtained the use of a stable in Frederick
Lane, which was to form the nucleus of the
hospital, which afterwards developed into such
a splendid institution. Having provided a few
fixtures, the yoimg surgeon commenced his
gratuitous labours, which he continued through-
out the whole of his career. An inscription in
the front of the hospital records the name of its
founder, and in the hall stands a bust of Sir
William Wilde, which was purchased by direc-
tion of the head surgeon at the sale of the
effects of William Wilde, his eldest son, after his
death in Cheltenham Terrace, Chelsea.

In 1848 he pubUshed what has been described
as " one of the most chivalous Uterary efforts,'*
his accoimt of "The Closing Years of Dean
Swift's Life."

Two years after his marriage with Miss Jane
Francesca Elgee, that is to say in 1853, he was
appointed Surgeon-Oculist-in-Ordinary to the
Queen, which was the first appointment of the
kind made in Ireland. In 1857 he visited
Stockholm, and was created a Chevalier of the
Kangdom of Sweden, and was, further, decorated
with the Order of the Polar Star. Seven years
later, at the conclusion of a chapter of the
Knights of St Patrick, held for the installation of

The Life of Oscar Wilde

new members of this Order, and after the knights
had left the hall, the genial Lord Carhsle, Viceroy,
from his place on the throne addressed the great
surgeon, beckoning to him to approach, and
said : " Mr Wilde, I propose to confer on you
the honour of knighthood, not so much in re-
cognition of your high professional reputation,
which is European, and has been recognised by
many countries in Europe, but to mark my
sense of the services you have rendered to
Statistical Science, especially in connection with
the Irish Census."

There was nothing of the cynic in Lord
Carlisle, and his remarks to William Wilde were
sincere as a compliment. One can imagine the
mental reservations that say Lord Beaconsfield
or Lord L3rtton would have made had they been
in Lord Carlisle's place and had they been called
upon to announce the impending honour to the
man who had distinguished himself by his labours
on behalf of the Irish Census. For no document
more than an Irish Census Report contains so
scathing an indictment of Castle rule ; nothing
that Speranza ever wrote constituted a more
violent appeal to Irish NationaUsts ; no Fenian
denunciation of the Sassenach has ever exceeded
in bitterness of reproach the simple total of
numerals which William Wilde's labours com-

The Life of Oscar Wilde

pelled the British Government to lay before the
people of Europe.

For the rest, the honour of knighthood ap-
pears to be distributed with greater largesse in
Ireland than even in England or Scotland, and
it really seems that it is in DubUn a distinction
for a professional man not to have received the
tap of the viceroy's sword. Wilde's acceptance
of the honour was resented in some places, for
it was thought that the husband of Speranza
ought not to have taken favours from the Castle,
just as some years later Speranza's acceptance of
a pension from the British Government which
she had so fiercely attacked in her youth, was
also resented.

In a biographical notice of Sir WiUiam Wilde
which was pubhshedin 1875, one year before his
death, where reference is made to another
honour which was won by him, the following
passage occiu^, which, read to-day, has a pe-
cuUarly pathetic interest.

" In connection with the award of the Cun-
ningham medal of the Royal Irish Academy in
1873 to Sir William Wilde, it is a remarkable
fact, worthy of record, that within a few months
of its presentation, his two sons, William and
Oscar, were each awarded a medal of Trinity
College — the former (who has just been called

The Life of Oscar Wilde

to the Irish bar) by the College Philosophical
Society for ethics and logic, and the latter (who
is now (1875) a distinguished scholar at Oxford)
for the best answering on the Greek drama/*

Sir WiUiam Wilde was too hospitable and too
charitable a man to amass any large fortmie
such as would have been acquired by most men
of his professional abihty and European reputa-
tion, but at the time of his death he was in the
comfortable position of a substantial landowner.
" Some years ago,'* says a notice of him, " Sir
WiUiam Wilde became a proprietor in the
county of Mayo, where he has most successfully
carried out schemes of improvement, and has
shown that he can reclaim land and profitably
carry on farming operations, which is what few
of even resident proprietors can boast. Finding
a portion of the ancestral estate of the O'Flyns
(from whom he is maternally descended) for
sale in the Land Estate Court, he became the
purchaser. The portion in cultivation was
covered by a wretched pauper tenantry, numbers
of whom it became necessary to remove to en-
able those remaining to have a means of com-
fortable existence. Understanding somewhat of
the language of the people, and being, as they
said, " one of the ould stock,*' he was able with
advice from the CathoUc clergy to carry out

The Life of Oscar WUde

his plans without exciting discontent or in-
volving the sacrifice of large sums of money
and he gave an ample tenant right to those that
remained on the property over twelve years ago.
The reclamation that followed, with the ad-
dition of erecting a residence for himself in a
most picturesque situation, has converted a
locality characterised only a few years ago by the
usual evidences of neglect, into one of the most
attractive and charming spots in the country.
In fact, Mayhera House, near Cong, with the
surrounding grounds and estate, may be fairly
claimed as one of the numerous triumphs of the
enterprising proprietor."

He wrote many works on Irish history and
archaeology, and was engaged on a biographical
work at the time of his death. He foimded
the Dtdblin Quarterly Journal of Science. His
Ufe is one long record of beneficent activity.
He carried out to the end the motto which he
had taken for his guide at the outset of his
career. He is recognised as one of the greatest
surgeons of the last century, and the recognition
is universal. And it should be remembered
that the reputation of a great surgeon cannot
be disturbed by the discoveries of posterity as
is the case with men, who as doctors, have ob-
tained in one age the fame of great luminaries

SIR WII.I.IAM WII.DK.

To face pagf 'iJ.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of science, and who, as knowledge progresses,
reveal themselves to a mocking world to have
been the veriest merry-andrews.

" Wilde's Arbeitsfeld war die KUnik " (WUde's
field was the operating-room), says of him a
great German writer on surgery. Elsewhere in
German medical books of the highest authority,
the Irish surgeon is referred to in the most eulo-
gistic terms. Now praise from German scientific
men, who for the most part seem to hold that
light can come from nowhere in the world but
a German university-town, and who have too
often distinguished themselves by a manifesta-
tion of envy and a spirit of almost feminine
dAiigrement, is the sincerest praise that a British
subject may ever hope to reap. One writer
describes Wilde as, " ein Meister in genialer
Schlussfolgerungen " (a master in deductions
inspired by genius). Another German autho-
rity sa3rs of him : " auch in seinem lebhaften
und praktischen Interesse fuer Taubstumme
erinnert ims Wilde an Itard " (in his strong and
practical interest in deaf mutes also, Wilde re-
minds us of Itard). Schwarze describes him as
"the father of modem otology.'* Indeed, it
appears that as an otologist he was even greater
than as an oculist. At a recent conference of
medical men in Zuerich when the great pioneers

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of modem surgery were being discussed in a
lecture, only three British surgeons were named,
and these were Graves, Stokes, and Wilde. In
Dublin medical circles he is still spoken of with
the highest respect. Most contemporary doctors
of his day would now be mentioned with the
pitying smile with which modem physicians refer
to all their predecessors whose studies were com-
pleted before the year 1889 swept away the
clouds which had obscured the vision of the meo
who profess to heal. Mr J. B. Story, F.R.C.S.I.,
who was senior surgeon of the St Mark's Ophthal-
mic Hospital, and who since its transformation
into the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital is
continuing the work of Sir William Wilde at
that splendid institution, is most eloquent in
the praise of his predecessor's skill and science.
He also holds that Sir William was greater as
an aural surgeon than as an eye-doctor, but in
both fields he considers him to have been one of
the most distinguished surgeons that Great
Britain has yet produced.

The same unanimity of praise is accorded to
his literary work. Perhaps the most interesting
reference to his quaUties as a writer on the
special subjects which he chose is contained in
a passage which occurs in the preface which his
wife. Lady Wilde, wrote to the life of B^ranger,

The Life of Oscar WUde

which her husband had left uncompleted at the
time of his death, and which Lady Wilde finished.
She b^ins by sa3ang what diffidence she feds
to take up the pen which her husband had let
faU^ so strongly does she feel her inferiority to
him, and goes on to say :

" There was probably no man of his generation
more versed in our national literature, in all that
ooDcemed the land and the people, the arts,
architecture, topography, statistics, and even
the legends of the country ; but, above all, in
his favourite department, the descriptive illus-
traticm of Ireland, past and present, in historic
and prehistoric times, he has justly gained a
wide reputation, as one of the most learned and
accurate, and at the same time one of the most
popular writers of the age on Irish subjects . . .
in the misty cloudland of Irish antiquities he
may especially be looked upon as a safe and
steadfast guide/'

His charitableness and compassion for human
suffering were such that although he was a
fdeasure-loving man he was ever ready, at a
moment's notice, to leave the gayest and happiest
social reunion to attend to the wants of some
patient who might be in need of his gratuitous
assistance. An anecdote in Fitzpatrick's '' Life
of Lever/' communicated to the biographer by

The Life of Oscar WUde

John Lever, the novelist's nephew, illustrates
this benevolent trait in the great surgeon's
character.

" On one occasion he (Lever) wanted Wilde
to come and meet at dinner some friends he had
assembled, and calling at Merrion Square was
told that the doctor could not possibly appear.
Being denied several times, my uncle at last put
his handkerchief in bandage form over his merry,
twinkUng eyes; his expedient brought the
oculist to the door in a moment ; the rencofUre
ending in a hearty laugh at the success of the
trick — which continued to afford much amuse-
ment at Templerogue."

Sir WilUam Wilde died after a long illness on
Wednesday, 19th April 1876, and was buried
at Mount Jerome cemetery. His hearse was
followed to the grave by a large and representa-
tive procession. The principal mourners were
Mr W. Wilde, Mr Oscar Wilde, and the Rev. Mr
Noble. AU the Dublin papers published long
obituary notices of the man, and the whole
country deplored his loss.

How pleasant it would be if this man's memory
could be left undisturbed as that of one who
was great and good, if nothing needed to be said
which may tarnish in some degree a reputation
so nobly won. Alas ! the exigencies of this

The Life of Oscar Wilde

biography exact, in justice to its immediate
subject, a closer investigation into the moral
composition of one who, together with many
sterling quaUties, may have transmitted to his
son certain leanings, instincts, passions, which
shall help us to understand the dismaying pro-
blem of that son's conduct of his life.

It may be briefly then stated that together
with a high reputation as a man of science and
as a kind-hearted, genial and charitable man. Sir
William Wilde had also the evil repute of being
a man of strong, unbridled passions, in the
gratification of which no sense of social or pro-
fessional responsibility could restrain him. A
characteristic anecdote of a stinging retort made
to him by a veterinary surgeon whom he once
met, while out riding in Phoenix Park, is
still told, and pubUc opinion ever held that
the veterinary surgeon's critique was just
and right. One of these patients, a Miss
Travers, indeed brought an action against the
Surgeon-Octilist-in-Ordinary, but the woman's
sanity appeared doubtful, and the case was dis-
missed. His son Oscar used to relate of his
mother as an instance of her noble serenity to-
wards Uf e how, when she was nursing his father
on his dying bed, each morning there used to
come into the sickroom the veiled and silent

The Life of Oscar Wilde

figure of a woman in deep mourning who sat
and watched but never spoke^ and at nightfall
went away^ to return on the following morning.
It may be noted as a significant fact that the
son seemed to see no aspersion on his father's
reputation in this story. It appeared to him to
be an apt illustration of his mother's nobiUty
of character. Sir WilUam Wilde left besides his
legitimate children a number of natural offspring.
One natural son of his was estabUshed by him
as a surgeon-octdist in a practice in Lower
Baggot Street, about two hundred yards from
his wife's home. The man died some years ago^
but is still remembered as the son of Sir WUUam
Wilde.

Another trait in his character which it may
be worth while to note, because this character-
istic was undoubtedly transmitted to one of his
sons, namely to Oscar's brother, was his great
neglect of himself. He was very shabby and
careless about his appearance. He used to be
spoken of as one of the untidiest men in Ireland.
An anecdote is told of Father Healy which
illustrates the reputation that Sir WiUiam had
in this respect. At a diimer-party at which the
Father was present, and which was held shortly
after Sir WiUiam Wilde had been knighted, an
Englishman who had just crossed from Holy-

The Life of Oscar Wilde

head was complaining of the sea-passage he had
been through. " It was, I think," he said, " the
dirtiest night I have ever seen." " Oh," said
Father Healy, " then it must have been wild."
The portraits of Sir William which exist,
showing him at different ages, reveal, as few
physiognomies can do, an extraordinary mixture
of intellectuality and animalism, of benevolence
and humanity with bestial instinct. Mr Harry
Fumiss has included him in his gallery of " Ugly
Men and Women." The quaUfication is hardly
a just one. As to the upper part of his face.
Sir William was remarkably handsome. No one
with such a forehead and such eyes could be
called ugly. But the lower part of his face and
especially the almost simian mouth are very bad.
In his son Oscar the same extraordinary con-
trast between the upper and lower parts of his
face was to be observed. He had the forehead
and eyes of a genius, or an angel. His mouth
was ugly, almost abnormal, and such as to
justify the accuracy if not the charitableness of
his strong enemy, the Marquess of Queensberry,
in an inhuman jest about his personal appear-
ance, which he made just after the poor man's
conviction.

CHAPTER II

Oscar Wilde's Mother — Her Gift for Languages — Oscar's Ex-
treme Linguistic Facility — Lady Wilde's Scholarship—
The Consolations of ^schylus — Her Serenity — Her
Schwaermerei — Oscar's Dissimilarity in this Respect — ^The
Preponderating Maternal Influence— Probable Physiologi-
cal Consequences — ^The Elgee's Italian Descent — ^Arch-
deacon Elgee — " One of the Saints of the Wexford
Calendar " — Lady WUde not his Grand-daughter — An In-
cident of 1798 — ^Dr Kingsbury — ^Lady Wilde's Distin-
guished Relations — ^The Rev. Charles Maturin — ^Balzac's
Tribute to Maturin — ^How he stood Sponsor to Oscar —
Clarence Mangan's Description of Maturin — ^Francesca
Elgee's Nationalism — "Speranza" and "John Fenshaw
Ellis" — Sir Charles Gavan Dufiy, Revolutionary — ^The
Villa Marguerite, Nice — His Journal The Nation — ^Number
304 — " Jacta Alea Est " — Other Contents of Number 304.

There can be no doubt that irom his mother, for
whom he ever felt so great a love and so deep a
reverence, Oscar Wilde inherited many of those
admirable gifts and graces which so distinguished
him amongst his contemporaries. Even as Lady
Wilde, Oscar had an astonishing faciUty for
learning languages. ** My favourite study," she
once related, ''was languages; I succeeded in
mastering two European languages before my
eighteenth year." It is on record that Oscar
Wilde was able to learn the difficult German

The Life of Oscar Wilde

language in an incredibly short time. We are
informed in " The Story of the Unhappy Friend-
ship," that " during the railway joume5rs which
he took in England in connection with his lec-
turing tour in the winter of 1883-1884, carrying
a small pocket-dictionary and a volume of Heine
with him, one book in each pocket of his fur-
lined overcoat, he taught himself German so
thoroughly that afterwards the whole of German
literature was open to him." Lady Wilde was a
wonderful classical scholar ; she had the sheer
delight in Latin and Greek literature that true
scholars manifest ; and made of the Roman
orators or the Greek tragedians her favourite
reading. A lady once called at No. i Merrion
Square and found Sir WilUam's house in the
possession of the bailiffs. '* There were two
strange men,*' this lady relates, " sitting in the
hall, and I heard from the weeping servant that
they were ' men in possession.' I felt so sorry
for poor Lady Wilde and hurried upstairs to the
drawing-room where I knew I should find her.
Speranza was there indeed, but seemed not in
the least troubled by the state of affairs in the
house. I found her lying on the sofa reading
the Prometheus Vinctus of iEschylus, from
which she began to declaim passages to me, with
exalted enthusiasm. She would not let me slip

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in a word of condolence^ but seemed very anxious
that I should share her entire admiration for
the beauties of the Greek tragedian which she
was reciting/* Of Oscar Wilde's scholarship
nothing need be said here. His reputation in
that respect is well-estabUshed. On what this
reputation was based will appear hereafter.

Lady Wilde was a briUiant talker : was
there ever in the world a more brilliant conver-
sationahst than Oscar Wilde ? Lady Wilde's
serenity and tolerance reached a level to which
none but great philosophers have attained. This
tolerance and resignation she taught to her son,
as some mothers teach their sons those imbe-
cilities which in the aggregate are known as
worldly wisdom. '* My mother," writes Oscar
Wilde, " who knew Ufe as a whole, used often to
quote to me Groethe's Unes — ^written by Carlyle
vin a book he had given her years ago, and
translated by him, I fancy, also : —

" * Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow, —
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.'

"They were the Unes which that 'noble Queen
of Prussia, whom Napoleon treated with such
coarse brutaUty, used to quote in her humiUation
and exile ; they were the lines my mother often

The Life of Oscar Wilde

quoted in the troubles of her later Ufe. I
absolutely declined to accept or admit the
enormous truth hidden in them. I could not
understand it. I remember quite well how I
used to tell her that I did not want to eat my
bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping
and watching for the dawn."

Yet the second verse, which seems to have
been overlooked by Lady Wilde as weU as by
Queen Louisa, was one from which, had it been
taught him also, the prisoner might have derived
consolation. Goethe here formulates the law of
predestination with the implacabiUty of a Calvin
or a Mahomet.

** Ihr fuehrt ins Leben ihn hinein

Und laesst den Armen schuldig werden
Dann uebergiebt Ihr ihn dem Pein
Denn jede Schuld raecht sich auf Erden."

It is always a dangerous thing to mutilate a
thought.

A German word which weU describes one trait
of Speranza's character, and which is not easily
translated into EngUsh, is Schwaermerisch. This
adjective describes a state of gushing exaltation,
a somewhat too ready enthusiasm, a capacity
for discovering romance in what is trite and
commonplace. The word conveys mild and
tolerant censure, and generally suggests that the
c 33

The Life of Oscar Wilde

person to whom it is applied is too much taken
up in daydreams to give much attention to
orderliness and the other domestic virtues. One
feels that but for Sx)eranza's Schwaermerei
there would have been no bailiffs ever to be
found in the hall of the fine house in Merrion
Square, and that the Surgeon-Octdist-in-Ordinary
would not have been allowed to go out into the
streets of DubUn in the neglected condition which
inspired Father Healy's mordant jibe.

There was nothing of the Schwaermef in
Oscar Wilde's composition. He had no penchant
for enthusiasm, exaltation he never displayed ;
and though as a writer he enrolled himself imder
that drapeau romantique des jeunes guerriers of
which Th6ophile Gautier speaks, as a man of
the world he avoided romance. He was for
precision, for the absolute, for rule and proof.
He was at one and the same time a perfect gram-
marian and an excellent logician. And that,
in spite of the restraint of his reason, he gave
way to promptings so illogical as those that
led to his catastrophe shows that at times, and
under certain conditions, his reason failed him.

While he inherited from his mother many
distinguished quahties, it may be deduced from
his Ufe that the preponderating maternal influ-
ence in his composition was responsible also for

The Life of Oscar Wilde

that abnormality of conduct which was the
direct cause of his downfall. It is a matter of
common observation among physiologists that
where a child is bom to a couple in which the
woman has the much stronger nature and a
great mental superiority over the father the
chances are that that child will develop at
certain critical periods in his career an extra-
ordinary attraction towards persons of its own
sex. This fact is one of Nature's mysteries.
Those who beheve in a Divine Creation of the
world should reverently bow their heads before
what they cannot understand and ought to take
to be a divine dispensation. At any rate, the
wisdom of Nature may be presumed greater
than that of the Ecclesiastical Courts.

It is held in Ireland amongst people who knew
the Elgee family that Lady Wilde's assertion
that her ancestors were of ItaHan origin, that the
name Elgee is a corruption of the patronymic
Alighieri which would have impUed a descent
from, or, at least, a kinship to, the immortal
Dante^ was but the outcome of a vivid and self-
deceivingimagination. Her conversation afforded
many instances of this habit of self-delusion.
Things that she wished to be facts soon became
invested in her mind with the soUdity of such.
Her day-dreams embodied themselves. For this

The Life of Oscar Wilde

her characteristic of Schwaermerei accounts also.
Her sons never repeated the legend of any
Florentine descent, though Willy, at least, was
not averse to boast of his relationships. Oscar,
on the other hand, apart from his occasional
references to the cousin who had so sonorous a
name, Gideon Ouseley, and to that other cousin.
Wills, who combined with dramatic genius a
mass of genial eccentricity, never spoke of his
relations. He had an instinctive horror of
an3rthing approaching to self-aggrandisement,
which he used to describe as the worst form
of vulgarity. According to Lady Wilde, the
Alighieri who first settled in Ireland and whose
name was corrupted into Elgee was her great-
grandfather. This man's son was the famous
Archdeacon Elgee of Wexford. Here another
negation is necessary. Lady Wilde was not the
daughter of an EpiscopaUan clergjmian ; she
was not the daughter of Archdeacon Elgee. Yet
these misstatements are reproduced in the
authoritative biographical notices which have
been pubUshed about her. In a letter which she
wrote on loth August 1893 to Mr D. J. O'Donog-
hue of Dublin, the author of an admirable " Life
of Mangan," she writes, referring to one of these
biographical errors : — " In the sketch given of
myself I regret that I was not named as Grand-

The Life of Oscar Wilde

daughter of Archdeacon Elgee of Wexford. The
Archdeacon is one of the saints of the Wexford
Calendar^ and the people are always pleased to
connect me with him. My father was eldest son
of Archdeacon Elgee, and he was not a clergy-
man."

Jane Francesca Elgee was bom in Wexford
in 1826 of a Protestant and Conservative family.
Her paternal grandfather, the Archdeacon re-
ferred to above, was a most distinguished man.
He was a Rector of Wexford ; and Lady Wilde
used to tell an anecdote about him to illustrate
his kindly character and the impulsive feehngs
of the Irish people. During the Revolution of
1798 a band of rebels had entered Wexford
Church where the Archdeacon was celebrating
the sacrament with a number of his parishioners.
The clergyman was dragged from the altar, and
was about to be put to death by the pikes of
the infuriated Irish, when one of them, striking
up the weapons which had already been turned
upon his devoted breast, implored his comrades
to spare a man who once had done an act of
great kindness to his family. He related this
act of charity — one of hundreds for which the
Rector was famous — and spoke with such elo-
quence that not only did the rebels, who had
been committing many acts of great cruelty in

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the district3 spare his life, but they also resolved
that none of his belongings should be touched^
and a guard was placed at the rectory to protect
the lives and the property of all its dwellers.

Her mother was a Miss Kingsbury who was
the grand-daughter of Dr Kingsbury, who in his
day was president of the Irish College of Ph3^i-
cians, and the intimate friend of Dean Swift.
His son, Dr Thomas Kingsbury, the father of
Sarah Kingsbury, who was Lady Wilde's mother,
was a Commissioner in Bankruptcy and the
owner of the well-known mansion, lisle House,
in DubUn. Lady Wilde had many distinguished
relations. One of her uncles was Sir Charles
Ormsby, Bart., who was a member of the last
Irish ParUament. She was first cousin to the
Sir Robert M'Clure who was famous as an ex-
plorer, and who is best known as " the seeker
of the N.-W. passage." Her only brother, Judge
Elgee, was a distinguished member of the
American bar. She was also a grand-niece of
the famous writer, the Rev. Charles Maturin.
Of this kinship Oscar Wilde was in his heart
very proud. When he left prison it was from
the hero of this Charles Maturin's most famous
novel, " Melmoth the Wanderer," that he
borrowed the name under which he was to drag
out the remaining agony of his years. Possibly

The Life of Oscar Wilde

what most endeared to him the memory of this
great-grand-uncle was that the mighty Balzac, for
whom his admiration was unlimited, had ex-
pressed his high approval of the famous novel.
In his " L'EUxir de longue Vie/' Balzac gazettes
Oscar Wilde's great-uncle with MoU^re, with
Goethe and with Byron, as one of the greatest
geniuses of Europe. He refers as follows to
Melmoth and to its author^ Maturin : —

" II flit en effet le type du Don Juan de
Moli&re, du Faust de Goethe, du Manfred de
Byron et du Melmoth de Maturin. Grandes
images trac^es par les plus grandes g£nies de
I'Evirope." One needs to know the estimation
which Oscar Wilde held of Balzac as an artist
and a thinker to understand with what grati-
fication these lines of highest tribute to his
kinsman must have filled him.

But besides Balzac there was another great
intellect which had confessed to the power which
Maturin and his hero had exercised over him.
In W. M. Thackeray's " Goethe in his Old Age "
we find the following reference to them : —

*' I felt quite afraid before them, and recollect
comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a
certain romance called " Melmoth the Wan-
derer," which used to alarm us boys thirty
years ago ; eyes of an individual who had made

The Life of Oscar Wilde

a bargain with a certain person^ and at an ex-
treme old age retained those eyes in all their
awful splendour."

Charles Baudelaire^ the poet, for whom Oscar
Wilde's admiration was so intense, wrote thus
of Melmoth : —

" Cel6bre voyageur Melmoth, la grande crea-
tion satanique du r6v6rend Maturin. Quoi de
plus grand, quoi de plus puissant relativement
i la pauvre humanity que ce p^e et ennuy£
Mehnoth ? "

In the house in Merrion Square was a fine
bust of Charles Maturin. It is either a cast
of one executed at the request of Sir Walter
Scott, and formerly preserved at Abbotsford,
or from a mask impression taken after his death.
Though, of course, the portrait of an older man
(than when Melmoth was written) years seemed
to have told vefy Uttle on his face if we compare
it with the strikingly youthful countenance that
appears in the New Monthly Magazine.

In this Charles Maturin we find that mixture
of genius and insanity which manifested it also
in the lad who was brought up in reverent con-
templation of his bust, and in whole-hearted
admiration of his life and work. Kinsmen by
affinity no less than kinsmen by consanguinity
can transmit their quahties and defects to their

The Life of Oscar Wilde

postaity ; and there can be no doubt whatever
that Oscar Wilde's nature was greatly moulded
by the strong influence that Maturin exercised
over his mother. This being an indisputable
fact it becomes necessary to seek some further
information on the subject of this strange and
brilliant man, who so many years after his death
was to stand sponsor to the most unhappy of
his kinsmen. The best account of Charles
Maturin as a man is to be found in the pages of
that excellent biography of " Clarence Mangan,
the Irish Poet," by R. J. O'Donoghue, to which
reference has been made above. Mr O'Donoghue
jMrefaces Mangan's description of Maturin with
some comments of his own, and the whole passage
may be quoted here. Particular attention may
be requested to the account of Maturin's ec-
centricities of dress. They may explain much
in Oscar's peculiarities in the same respect.
Oscar Wilde was accused because of them of a
vulgar desire for r/clatpte, for self-advertisement.
To Charles Maturin a more lenient age accorded
his foibles, just as to Balzac was granted his
monkish cowl, to Van Dyck his court array, and
to Barbey d'Aurevilly his cloak of red samite.

The following is Mangan's description with
O'Donoghue's prefatory remarks : —

** Towards the dose of his life Mangan put on

The Life of Oscar Wilde

record his impressions of this remarkable writer,
Maturin, in whom Scott and Bjnron so thoroughly
beUeved that the first offered to edit his works
after his deaths and the latter used all his in-
fluence successfully to get a hearing for his
plays. Numerous stories are related of him.
His genius was of the untamed, uncultivated
kind. His works are those of a madman,
glowing with burning eloquence and deep feeling,
but full of absiurdities and inconsistencies. His
Irish tales, such as * The Wild Irish Boys/ and
' The Milesian Chief/ are made almost un-
readable by a vicious and ranting style. When-
ever Maturin was engaged in literary work he
used to place a wafer on his forehead to let
those who entered his study know that he was
not to be disturbed. Mangan had more than the
prevaiUng admiration for the grotesqueness of
Maturin's romances ; their terrible and awe-
inspiring nature impressed him profotmdly. He
felt a kind of fascination for this lonely man of
genius, whom at one period he might have
called in his own words,

" * The Only, the Lonely, the Earth's Companionless One? '

" He opens his sketch, which is very character-
istic of his style, with the humorous rh3ane : —

" * Maturin, Maturin, what a strange hat you're in ? '

The Life of Oscar Wilde

" ' I saw Maturin but on three occasions,
and on all these within two months of his death.
I was then a mere boy ; and when I assure the
reader that I was strongly imbued with a belief
in those doctrines of my church which seem
(and only seem) to savour of what is theologi-
cally called '' exclusiveness/' he will appreciate
the force of the impulse which urged me one
morning to follow the author of Melmoth into
the porch of St Peter's Church in Aimgier Street,
and hear him read the burial service. Maturin,
however, did not read, he simply repeated ; but
with a grandeur of emphasis, and an impressive
power of manner that chained me to the spot.
His eyes, while he spoke, continually wahdered
from side to side, and at length rested on me,
who reddened up to the roots of my hair at
being even noticed by a man that ranked far
higher in my estimation than Napoleon Bona-
parte. I observed that, after having concluded
the service, he whispered something to the clerk
at his side, and then again looked steadfastly at
me. If I had been the master of sceptres — of
wwlds — I would have given them all that
moment to have been put in possession of his
remark.

** * The second time I saw Maturin he had
been just officiating, as on the former occasion,

The Life of Oscar Wilde

at a funeral. He stalked along York Street
with an abstracted, or rather distracted air, the
white scarf and hat-band which he had received
remaining still wreathed round his beautifully-
shaped person, and exhibiting to the gaze of the
amused and amazed pedestrians whom he almost
literally encountered in his path, a boot upon
one foot, and a shoe on the other. His long
pale, melancholy, Don Quixote, out-of-the-world
face would have incUned you to believe that
Dante, Bajazet, and the Cid had risen together
from their sepulchres and clubbed their features
for the production of an effect. But Maturin's
mind was only fractionally pourtrayed, so to
speak, in his countenance. The great Irishman^
like Hamlet, had that within him, which passed
show, and escaped far and away beyond the
possibility of expression by the clay lineament.
He bore the " hunderscars " about him, but they
were graven, not on his brow, but on his heart.
" ' The third and last time that I beheld this
marvellous man I remember well. It was some
time before his death, on a balmy Autimm
evening, in 1824. He slowly descended the
steps of his own house, which, perhaps, some
future Transatlantic biographer may thank me
for informing him was at No. 42 York Street,*

> 41 is generally given as the number.
44

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and took his way in the direction of Whitefriar
Street, into Castle Street, and past the Royal
Exchange into Dame Street, every second person
staring at him and the extraordinary double-
belted and treble-caped rug of an old garment —
neither coat nor cloak — which enveloped his
person. But here it was that I, who had
tracked the footsteps of the man as his shadow,
discovered that the feeUng to which some in-
dividuals, rather over sharp and shrewd, had
been pleased to ascribe this '^ affectation of
singularity '' had no existence in Maturin. For,
instead of passing along Dame Street, where he
would have been " the observed of all observers,"
he wended his way along the dark and forlorn
locality of Dame Lane, and having reached the
end of this not very classical thoroughfare,
crossed over to Anglesea Street, where I lost
sight of him. Perhaps he went into one of those
bibUopoUtan estabUshments wherewith that
Paternoster Row of DubUn then abounded. I
never saw him afterwards. ... An inhabitant
of one of the stars dropped upon our planet
could hardly feel more bewildered than Maturin
habitually felt in his consociation with the
beings around him. He had no friend, com-
panion, brother ; he and the '' Lonely Man of
Shiraz '' might have shaken hands and then —

The Life of Oscar Wilde

parted. He — ^in his own dark way — ^understood
many people ; but nobody understood him in
any way.' "

Till the age of eighteen Francesca Elgee de-
voted herself entirely to study and reading.
" Till my eighteenth year, I never wrote any-
thing/' she relates, " Then, one day, a volume
of ' Ireland's Library,' issued from The Nation
office by Mr Duffy, happened to come my way.
I read it eagerly, and my patriotism was kindled/'
This volume was D' Alton Williams' book, " The
Spirit of the Nation."

" Till then," says Lady Wilde, " I was quite
indifferent to the National movement, and if I
thought about it at all, probably had a bad
opinion of its leaders. For my family was
Protestant and Conservative, and there was no
social intercoiuse between them and the Catholics
and NationaUsts. But once I had caught the
National spirit, and all the Uterattu-e of Irish
songs and sufferings had an enthralling interest
for me, then it was that I discovered that I could
write poetry. In sending my verses to the
editor of The Nation I dared not have my name
pubUshed, so I signed them ' Speranza,' and
my letters ' John Fenshaw EUis,' instead of
Jane Francesca Elgee."

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Lady Wilde did not commence contributing
to The Nation in 1844, as her biographers state.
Her first contributions appeared in that journal
in i847« She was at that time living with her
parents at 34 Leeson Street, which is in a quarter
which is the Bayswater of DubUn. Her most
famous poem was entitled ''A MiUion a Decade/'
These contributions were for the most part
published in a small type column which pre-
ceded the leading articles, and which appears to
have been reserved for the efforts of amateur
ocmtributors, answers to correspondents, etc.
Later on, however, that is to say in 1848, the
honours of large type and prominent position
were accorded to Speranza's poems and John
Fenshaw Ellis's prose.

The girl's poetry has no particular merit
either of expression or of thought, and, indeed,
compared unfavourably with similar verse con-
tributed by three other young women, whose
NationaUsm was of a more sincere type. These
were known to the readers of The Nation as
"Eva," "Mary," and "Thomasine." In his
book, " My Life in Two Hemispheres," Sir
Charles Gavan Duffy speaks of Speranza as the
most gifted of the fotu:, and, indeed, describes her
as " a woman of genius." At the time that that
book was written the former NationaUst editor,

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the Revolutionary of 1848, was living in opulence
and luxury at the Villa Marguerite in Nice ;
decked with a British title and enriched with
British gold. His sympathies would naturally
tend rather to the one of the four women who
like himself had abandoned the cause of National-
ism as une eneur de jeunesse when that cause had
become a desperate one and a more profitable
field for enthusiasm and activity offered itself.
Among the martyrs of 1848, not among those
who had the fortune to die then, but amongst
the poor, broken old men, who are dragging out
penurious existences in DubUn at this very day,
men who never abandoned the cause, and who
will die as ardent NationaUsts as they were when
Duffy and Speranza fired them into acts which
sent them into confinement in British gaols,
neither Speranza nor Duffy are remembered, as
Nationalists, with great esteem. The Fenian
editor, O'Leary, states that "Speranza" was
of the four poetesses on The Nation, the one
who was considered the least talented, that
Eva was held to be the most sincere and
the most gifted. " Eva " was Miss Eva Mary
Kelly. " Mary " was Miss Ellen Downing. As
to " Thomasine " her anon3anity has not been
pierced.

The great effect produced by Francesca Elgee

48 >

The Life of Oscar Wilde

— it is to be noted as characteristic that she ob-
jected to the beautiful but unromantic name of
Jane and never used it — ^was when she de-
nounced herself in open court as the authoress
of the famous article " Jacta est Alea/' for the
publishing of which the future Sir Charles
Duffy of the Villa Marguerite^ Nice, was being
prosecuted.

This article appeared in No. 304 (printed 304)
of The Nation which was pubUshed in DubUn
under date of Satm-day, 29th July 1848. The
Nation^ a weekly magazine journal of sixteen
pages, of the size of the Petit Journal ^ which was
published at sixpence, was then in its sixth
volume. On the nxunber preserved in the
National Library of Ireland, in DubUn, there is
written upon the front page in ink the following
words : " This is The Suppressed Number. I
believe it is the only copy which escaped, and
that was not seized and carried to the Castle."
This statement appears to be erroneous, for
other copies are in existence, including one at
the British Museiun.

Lady Wilde's article was the second leader on
the editorial page. The leading article, pre-
smnably written by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy of
the Villa Marguerite, Nice, was entitled " The
Tocsin of Ireland," and is of that kind of politi-
D 49

The Life of Oscar Wilde

cal, inflammatory writing which, once one has
read it, is iijomediately forgotten. On this
article Francesca Wilde's article follows. It is
published anonymously, and fills rather more
than two colunms of the paper. As it is a docu-
ment of essential interest in the archives of the
family of the man with whom this volimie deals
it is reproduced in extenso in the following
chapter, just as it was printed in The Nation,
with the misprints italicised.

The 304th number of the revolutionary paper,
edited by the future Sir Charles Gavan Duf^
of the Villa Marguerite, Nice, contained much
other matter which was calculated to incense
the Castle. Amongst the topical articles which
were pubUshed we find one on " Easy Lessons
in MiUtary Matters " by a veteran, which deals
with such subjects as " Organisation," " Arms."
Elsewhere in this journal the young Nationalist,
who had been inflamed by the editorials of Sir
Charles Gavan Duffy, was instructed "How
to Break Down a Bridge, or Blow One Up,"
" How to buy and try a Rifle" ; and valuable
topical information was also given on " Casting
Bullets."

It may be added that Francesca Elgee had no
dealings with the other people, apart from
Duffy, who were active in agitation. In a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

letter to Mr O'Donoghue, dated 13th November
1888^ she writes : '' I can give no information as
to the workers of '48. Sir Charles Duffy would
be the best authority. His address is the Villa
Marguerite^ Nice^ France."

S»

CHAPTER III
JACTA ALEA EST

Lady Wilde's Appeal to Arms — ^The Famous Article in The
Nation — A Specimen of Revolutionary Literature —
" A Hundred Thousand Muskets 1 "—Terrifying the Castle
— " The Glorious Young Meagher I " — An Exact Tran-
script from the Copy in the National Library of Ireland.

" The Irish Nation has at length decided.
England has done us one good service at least.
Her recent acts have taken away the last miser-
able pretext for passive submission. She has
justified us before the world, and ennobled the
timid, humble supplication of a degraded, in-
sulted people, into the proud demand for inde-
pendence by a resolved, prepared, and fearless
Nation.

" Now, indeed, were the men of Ireland
cowards if this moment for retribution, combat,
and victory, were to pass by unemployed. It
finds them slaves, but it would leave them in-
famous.

*' Oh ! for a hundred thousand muskets
guttering brightly in the Ught of heaven, and
the moniunental barricades stretching across

The Life of Oscar Wilde

each of our noble streets, made desolate by
England — circling round that doomed Castle,
made infamous by England, where the foreign
tj^ant has held his council of treason and ini-
quity against our people and our country for
seven hundred years.

" Courage rises with danger, and heroism with
resolve. Does not our breath come freer, each
heart beat quicker in these rare and grand
moments of human Ufe, when all doubt, and
wavering, and weakness are cast to the winds,
and the soul rises majestic over each petty
obstacle, each low, selfish consideration, and,
flinging off the fetters of prejudice, bigotry, and
egotism, bounds forward into the higher, di-
viner Ufe of heroism and patriotism, defiant as
a conqueror, devoted as a martyr, omnipotent
as a Deity !

"We appeal to the whole Irish Nation — ^is
there any man amongst us who wishes to take
one further step on the base path of sufferance
and slavery ? Is there one man that thinks that
Ireland has not been sufficiently insulted, that
Ireland has not been sufficiently degraded in her
honour and her rights, to justify her now in
fiercely turning upon her oppressor ? No I a
man so infamous cannot tread the earth ; or,
if he does, the voice of the coward is stifled in

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the clear^ wild^ ringing shout that leaps from
hill to hill^ that echoes from sea to sea^ that
peals from the hps of an uprisen Nation — ' We
must be free ! *

" In the name then of your trampled, insulted,
degraded country ; in the name of all heroic
virtues, of all that makes life illustrious or death
divine ; in the name of your starved, your
exiled, your dead; by your mart5n:s in prison
cells and felon chains ; in the name of God and
man ; by the listening earth and the watching
heaven, I call on you to make this aspiration of
your souls a deed. Even as you read these weak
words of a heart that yet palpitates with an
enthusiasm as heroic as your own, and your
breast heaves and yoiu' eyes grow dim with
tears as the memory of Ireland's wrongs rushes
upon your soul — even now lift up your right
hand to heaven and swear — ^swear by your un-
dying soul, by your hopes of immortality, never
to lay down your arms, never to cease hostilities,
till you regenerate and save this fallen land.

" Gather round the standard of your chiefs.
Who dares to say he will not follow, when
O'Brien leads ? Or who amongst you is so ab-
ject that he will grovel in the squalid misery of
his hut, or be content to be flung from the ditch
side into the Uving tomb of the poorhouse,

The Life of Oscar Wilde

rather than charge proudly Uke brave men and
free men, with that glorious young Meagher
at their head, upon the hired mercenaries of
their enemies ? One bold, one decisive move.
One instant to take breath, and then a rising ;
a rush, a charge from north, south, east and
west upon the EngUsh garrison, and the land is
ours. Do your eyes flash, do your hearts throb
at the prospect of having a country ? For you
have had no coimtry. You have never felt the
pride, the dignity, the majesty of independence.
You could never Uft up your head to heaven
and gloiy in the name of Irishman, for all
Europe read the brand of slave upon your brow.

" Oh ! that my words could burn Uke molten
metal through your veins, and light up this
ancient heroic daring which would make each
man of you a Leonidas — each battle-field a
Marathon — each pass a Thermopylae . Courage I
need I preach to Irishmen of courage ? Is it so
hard a thing then to die ? Alas I do we not all
die daily of broken hearts and shattered hopes,
and tortures of mind and body that make Ufe a
weariness, and of weariness worse even than the
tortures; for Ufe is one long, slow agony of
death.

" No ! it cannot be death you fear ; for you
have braved the plague in the exile ship of the

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Atlantic, and plague in the exile's home beyond
it ; and famine and ruin, and a slave's life, and
a dog's death ; and hundreds, thousands, a
miUion of you have perished thus. Courage 1
You will not now beUe those old traditions of
humanity that tell of this divine God-gift with-
in us. I have read of a Roman wife who stabbed
herself before her husband's eyes to teach him
how to die. These million deaths teach us as
grand a lesson. To die for Ireland ! Yes ; have
we not sworn it in a thousand passionate words
by our poets and orators — ^in the grave resolves
of councils, leagues and confederations. Now
is the moment to test whether you value most
freedom or life. Now is the moment to strike,
and by striking save, and the day after the
victory it will be time enough to count your
dead.

" But we do not provoke this war. History
will write of us — that Ireland endured wrongs
unexampled by any depotism — sufferings un-
equalled by any people — her life-blood drained
by a vampire host of foreign masters and officials
— ^her honour insulted by a paid army of spies —
her cries of despair stifled by the armed hand
of legalised ruffianism — ^that her peasants starved
while they reaped the corn for their foreign
lords, because no man gave them bread — that

The Life of Oscar Wilde

her palUd artisans pined and wasted^ because no
man gave them work — that her men of genius^
the noblest and purest of her sons, were dragged
to a felon's cell, lest the people might hear the
voice of triUh, and that in this horrible atrophy
of all mental and physical powers^ this stagna-
tion of all existences, whoever dared to rise and
demand wherefore it was that Ireland, made so
beautiful by God, was made the plague spot of
the universe by man — ^he was branded as a
fdon — ^imprisoned, robbed, tortured, chained,
exiled, murdered. Thus history will write of
us. And she will also write, that Ireland did
not start from this horrid trance of suffering and
despair until 30,000 swords were at her heart,
and even then she did not rise for vengeance,
only prepared to resist. No — ^we are not the ag-
gressors— ^we do not provoke this terrible war —
Even with six million hearts to aid us, and with all
the chances of success in our favour we still offer
teiTOs to England. If she capitulates even now
at the eleventh hom-, and grants the moderate,
the just demands of Ireland, our arms shall not
be raised to sever the golden Unk that unites
the two nations. And the chances of success
are all with us. There is a God-like strength
in a just cause — ^a desperate energy in men who
are fighting in their own land for the possession

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of that land. A glowing enthusiasm that scorns
all danger when from success they can look on-
ward to a future of unutterable glory and
happiness for their country. Opposed to us are
only a hired soldiery, and a paid police, who
mere trained machines even as they are, yet
must shudder (for they are men) at the horrible
task of butchery, under the blasphemed name
of duty to which England summons them.
Brothers many of them are of this people they
are called upon to murder — sons of the same
soil — ^fellow-countrymen of those who are heroic-
ally, struggling to elevate their common country.
Surely whatever humanity is left in them will
shrink from being made the sad instruments of
despotism and t3n:anny — ^they will blush to re-
ceive the purchase-money of England which
hires them for the accursed and fratricidal work.
Would a SiciUan have been found in the ranks
of Naples ? Would a Milanese have been de-
tected in the fierce hordes of Austria ? No ; for
the SiciUans prize honom-, and the stately
Milanese would strike the arm to the earth that
would dare to offer them Austrian gold in pay-
ment for the blood of their own cotmtrymen.
And heaven forbid that in Ireland could be
found a band of armed fratricides to fight against
their own land for the flag of a foreign tyrant.

The Life of Oscar WUde

But if, indeed, interest or coercion should tempt
them into so horrible and unnatural a position,
pity, a thousand times pity for those brave
officers who vaunt themselves on their honom-.
Pity for that brave soldiery whose Irish valour
has made England illustrious, that they must
stain honour, and fame, and profession, and
their brave swords, by lending them to so in-
famous a cause. Ah ! we need not tremble for
a nation filled with a pure and holy enthusiasm,
and fighting for all that human nature holds
dear ; but the masters of those hired mercen-
aries may well tremble for their cause, for the
consciousness of eternal infamy will unnerve
every arm that is raised to uphold it.

*' If the government, then, do not come for-
ward with honest, honourable and liberal con-
cessions, let the war active and passive com-
mence. They confide in the discipHne of their
troops — we in the righteousness of our cause.
But not even a burning enthusiasm — ^which they
have not — ^added to their discipline, could make
a garrison of 30,000 men hold their grotmd
against six millions. And one thing is certain —
that if the people do not choose to fight the
garrison, they may starve them. Adopt the
Milan method — ^let no man sell to them. This
passive warfare may be carried on in every

The Life of Oscar Wilde

village in Ireland^ while more active hostilities
are proceeding through all the large towns and
cities. But^ to gain ]X)ssession of the capital
should be the grand object of all efforts. Let
every line converge to this point. The Castle
is the key -stone of EngUsh power; take it,
destroy it, bum it — ^at any hazard become
masters of it, and on the same ground from
whence proceeded all those acts of insult and
infamy which aroused the just retribution of a
people's vengeance, establish a government in
whom the people of all classes can place con-
fidence.

" On this pedestal of fallen t5n:anny and cor-
ruption raise a structure of nobleness that will
at once give security and prestige of time-
honoured and trusted names to our revolution.
For a people who rise to overthrow a despotism
will estabUsh no modification of it in its place.
If they fight it is for absolute independence ; and
as the first step in a revolution should be to
prevent the possibihty of anarchy, the men
elected to form this government ought at once
to take the entire progress and organisation of
the revolution under their protection and
authority. It will be their duty to watch that
no crime be suffered to stain the pure flag of
Irish Uberty. We must show to the world that

The Life of Oscar Wilde

we are fitted to govern ourselves ; that we are,
indeed, worthy to be a free nation, that the words
union, liberty, country, have as sacred a meaning
in our hearts and actions as they are holy on
our Hps ; that patriotism means not merely the
wild irresistible force that crushed t5n:anny, but
reconstruction, regeneration, heroism, sacrifice,
sublimity ; that we have not alone to break
the fetters of Ireland, but to raise her to a
glorious elevation — defend her, liberate her,
ennoble her, sanctify her.

"Nothing is wanting now to complete our
regeneration, to ensure our success, but to cast
out those vices which have disgraced our name
among the nations. There are terrible traditions
shadowing the word Liberty in Ireland. Let it
be our task, men of this generation — descendants
of martyrs, and sufferers, and heroes, to make
it a glad evangel of happiness — a reign of truth
over fictions and symbols — of intellect over pre-
judice and conventionalism — of humanity over
tyranny and oppression. Irishmen ! this re-
surrection into a new Ufe depends on you ; for
we have all lain dead. Hate, distrust, oppres-
sion, dismuon, selfishness, bigotry — ^these things
are Death. We must crush aU vices — anni-
hilate all evil passions — ^trample on them, as a
triumphant Christ with his foot upon the

The Life of Oscar Wilde

serpent, and then the proud hallelujah of Free-
dom will rise to heaven from the lips of a pure,
a virtuous, a regenerated, a God-blessed people ;
and this fair land of ours, which now affrights
the world with its misery, will be one grand
temple, in which we shall all kneel as brothers —
one holy, peaceful, loving fraternity — sons of
one common country — children of one God —
heirs together of those blessings purchased by
our blood — ^a heritage of freedom, justice, inde-
pendence, prosperity and glory 1 "

CHAPTER IV

Lady Wilde's Nationalism — ^The Influence of a Single Book —
Oicar Wilde's Similar Claim— Meeting between Mr Dufiy
and Mr Ellis — Speranxa's Fine Gesture — ^Her Admiration
for Mr Duffy— Pen-Portraits of Lady Wilde at Different
Pieriods — How she dung to Youth — Her Fondness for
Society — ^Eccentricities of Dress — ^Her Son's Resemblance
to her — Her literary Labours — A Letter to Mr
CDonoghue— Brief Summary of Conclusions.

It was probably rather by the other contents
of No. 304 of The Nation than by the article
''Jacta Alea Est/' that DubUn Castle was
alarmed, and deemed it advisable to order the
confiscation of this number, the suppression of
the journal, and the arrest and arraignment of
Mr (afterwards Sir Charles) Dufiy. It would be
difficult otherwise to imderstand these extreme
measures, for the article is exactly of that class
of revolutionary Uterature which is usually read
with gratification by those in power. There is
no mischief to be feared from rhapsodical
generalities. On the other hand, the papers
giving practical advice to the malcontents on
subjects so subversive as the destruction of
bridges and the manipulation of fire-arms cer-
tainly warranted action. However that may be,

The Life of Oscar Wilde

it has generally been conceded to Lady Wilde
that with her pen she made the Castle tremble :
she stepped at once to the front as an ardent
Nationahst and patriot ; and of none of her
writings were her sons perhaps more proud than
of the article which is given in the preceding
chapter. Her Nationalism was, of course, not
sincere. It could not be. She had been trained
as a Protestant and a Conservative. Her re-
lations, those of whom she was most proud, were
beneficed dignitaries under the British Crown,
just as later her husband was to become by
appointment, warrant and viceregal favour, a
dependent of British Royal favour, and she her-
self during the last six years of her life was to
draw from the Civil List a small alimony of
imperial silver. No patriotism, no national
spirit can be fired in man or woman by the
perusal of a single book ; and of D' Alton
WiUiams' work it may be said that it inspires
nothing but ennui. It is not in this way that
the Joans of Arc are driven forth to battle. It
is, of course, probable that it was the perusal
of this book which suggested to the young
woman that evils existed, that here was a field
for her Uterary activity, and that her spasmodic
Nationalism was the result. It showed the
young woman's practical sense that this National-

The Life of Oscar Wilde
ism was only spasmodic; for as we look back
on the period of more than half-a-centnry which
has elapsed since she first manifested its spirit^
we observe that it has not been the worldly
wise amongst Irish men and women who have
espoused the National cause. For the true
Nationalist there have been the galleys, the
rifle, the scaffold, and, as a set-off from the de-
rision of the worldly wise, the mute gratitude
of the voiceless people and a martyr's crown.
Lady Wilde's crassa Minerva did not allow her
to cling to a cause of which she was so soon
to discover that it was a hopeless one. Her
Nationalism, if whim it were, she readily aban-
doned, and she did not go through Ufe explaining
that the perusal of a single book had entirely
changed the current of her thoughts, her pur-
poses and aims. This was one of the mistakes
that was made by her son, Oscar. It pleased
him to say that some single book, which had
come into his hands when he was a young man,
had thus revolutionised his entire mentality; and
he attributed to the influence of this book all
the things that seemed to have been prompted
in him by what was not common-sense. In a
passage in " The Picture of Dorian Gray," he
describes how the hero of that novel fell under
the influence of a single book. *' It was the
« 65

The Life of Oscar Wilde

strangest book that he had ever read. It
seemed to him that^ in exquisite raiment, and to
the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world
were passing in dumb show before him. ... It
was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of
incense seemed to ding about its pages, and to
trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the
sentences, the subtle monotony of their music,
so full as it was of complex refrains, and move-
ments, elaborately rq)eated, produced in the
mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to
chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming,
that made him unconscious of the faUing day
and the creeping shadows. . . . For years
Dorian Gray could not free himself from the
influence of this book."

This is, of course, siUiness. Yet Oscar Wilde
used to make the same silly, self-deceiving state-
ment about himself, and attributed to some
'' poisonous book '' which he had once read
many of the abnormahties of his conduct. In
this, no doubt, he was prompted by the story
which he had heard at home as a boy,
how the mother whom he so admired and
so loved had been prompted to action and
to an entire renunciation of early principles
and creeds by the reading of a single book.
The fact that the influence of this book

The Life of Oscar Wilde

had been of the briefest was entirely over-
looked.

The story of the first meeting between the
editor of The Nation and *' John Fenshaw Ellis "
is well-known. It may, however, be repeated
here, with the addition of Lady Wilde's own
account of how it was that having long refused
to let Mr Duffy call upon her she finally gave
him permission to do so.

"After a while," she relates, "Mr Duffy
wished me to call at the office, and again ' Mr
Ellis ' had to excuse himself from doing it. One
day my nurse came into my room and found
The Nation on my table. Then she accused me
of contributing to it, declaring the while that
such a seditious paper was fit only for the fire.
The secret being out in my own family there was
no longer much motive for concealment, and I
gave my editor permission to call upon me.
Even then, as Sir Charles Duffy has since told
me he scarcely knew who ' Speranza ' might be,
and great was his surprise, therefore, when I
stepped out from an inner room."

Sir Charles Duffy relates in his " Yoimg
Ireland " that " Mr EUis, whom hehad frequently
requested to call upon him at The Nation office,
pleaded that there were difficulties which ren-
dered this course inpracticable. Finally, Mr

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Ellis asked the editor to call at 34 Leeson Street.
Going to the house DufEy states that he was
met by Sir George Smith, publisher to Dublin
University, who presented him to Miss Jane
Francesca Elgee, whom he describes as a tall
girl, whose stately carriage and figure, flashing
brown eyes, and features cast in an heroic mould
seemed fit for the genius of poetry or the spirit
of the revolution."

After the suppression of The Nation, most of
the leaders of the revolutionary movement were
transported for treason-felony ; while Mr (after-
wards Sir Charles) Duffy was put on trial for
sedition. The attorney-general quoted from
the article " Jacta Alea Est " in support of the
charge, and declared that that article was
sufficient to convict the prisoner at the bar.
" I am the culprit, if culprit there be," cried a
voice from the gallery of the court, and a young
woman rose to her feet. It was Jane Francesca
Elgee who by this fine gesture endeared herself
for ever to the Irish Nation. The result was to
trouble the minds of the jury ; they disagreed ;
and the editor of The Nation was discharged to
pursue his career more profitably to himself in
another hemisphere.

Speranza's admiration for this man appears
to have been very great. The following is one

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of the many letters she wrote to him after her
identity had been disclosed.

" 34 Lbbson Strbbt, Monday.

** My dear Sir, — I return with many thanks
the volmne of Cromwell which has been travelUng
about with me for the last four months, and shall
feel obUged for the two others when you are
quite at leisure, though not even Carlyle can
make this soulless iconoclast interesting. It is
the only work of Carlyle's I have met with in
which my heart does not go along with his
words.

" I cannot forbear teUing you, now the pen
is in my hand, how deeply impressed I felt by
your opening lecture to your club. It was the
sublimest teaching, and the style so simple from
its very subUmity — ^it seemed as if truth passed
directly from your heart to ours, without the
aid of any medium — at least I felt that every-
where the thoughts struck you, nowhere the
words, and this in my opinion is the perfection
of composition. It is soul speaking to soul. I
never felt the dignity of your cause so much as
then — ^to promote it any way seemed an object
that would ennoble a Ufe. Truly, we cannot de-
spair when God sends us such teachers. But
you will wish me away for another four happy

The Life of Oscar Wilde

months if I write you such long notes. So I
shall conclude with kind compliments to Mrs
Duffy, and remain, yours very sincerely,

" Francesca Elgee.

" I only read your lecture — some time or
other I would like to hear you."

A year or two before she died in the dismal
house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, which her son
William and his family shared with her, and of
which her son Oscar paid the rent. Lady Wilde
said to a young Irish poet :

" I must go and Uve up Primrose Hill ; I was
an eagle in my youth."

By various writers various pictures have been
given of this extraordinary woman at various
periods in her life. There are many people still
Uving in Dublin who remember No. i Merrion
Square when it was the salon of the capital.
On reception nights the crush of people in the
drawing-rooms upstairs used to be so great that
it was a familiar spectacle that of Lady Wilde
elbowing her way through the crush and aying
out, '* How ever am I to get through all these
j)eople."

As her beauty departed from her with the
advance of years. Lady Wilde used to darken
the rooms in which visitors saw her. Stories

The Life of Oscar Wilde

got about that the purpose of this was to conceal
some disfiguring mark on her face ; but the fact
was merely that she did not wish people to
notice the difference that Time had wrought on
the features and complexion of the beautiful
" Speranza " of 1848. A Miss Corkran gives
the following accoimt of a call she paid to Lady
Wilde at No. i Menion Square, an account
which is not characterised by much sympathy
or kindness : —

" I called at Merrion Square late in the after-
noon^ for Lady Wilde never received anyone
until 5 P.M., as she hated strong hghts; the
shutters were closed, and the lamps had pink
shades, though it was full daylight. A very
tall woman — she looked over six feet high —
she wore that day a long crimson silk gown
which swept the floor. The skirt was
voluminous, underneath there must have been
two crinoUnes, for when she walked there was a
peculiar swaying, sweUing movement, like that
of a vessel at sea, with the sails filled with wind.
Over the crimson silk were floimces of Limerick
lace, and round what had been a waist an
Oriental scarf embroidered with gold was
twisted. The long, massive, handsome face was
plastered with powder. Over her blue-black,
glossy hair was a gilt crown of laurels. Her

The Life of Oscar Wilde

throat was bare, so were her arms, but they
were covered with quaint jewellery. On her
broad chest was fastened a series of large minia-
ture brooches, evidently family portraits . . .
this gave her the appearance of a walking
family mausolem. She wore white kid gloves,
held a scent-bottle, a lace handkerchief , and a fan.
Lady Wilde reminded me of a tragedy queen
at a suburban theatre."

Lady Wilde was very popular in Dublin with
the people. It is related that " they used to
cheer her when she was on her way to the
drawing-rooms at the Castle"; just because
some years previously she had urged a hundred
thousand musketeers to march upon that very
Castle, and to vnpe it off the face of Ireland.

In the story of *' An Unhappy Friendship "
we find the following reference to Lady Wilde
at home in her son WilUam's house in Park
Street, Grosvenor Square, in 1883 : —

'* During the first days of my stay there
Oscar Wilde took me to a reception at his
mother's house. . . . I was presented as having a
volume of poems in the press, and was graciously
received. Later on, as I was standing talking
to Anna Kingsford, Lady Wilde, holding some
primroses in her hand, crossed the drawing-room,
repeating ; * Flowers for the poet ! Flowers

The Life of Oscar Wilde

for the poet ! ' It was for me that they were
intended, for she came up to me and decorated
my coat with the posy."

Lady Wilde was at that time about fifty-
seven years of age. She had by then entirely
renounced her natural, feminine, and pathetic
endeavours to conceal the march of Time. Her
receptions were in broad daylight, the deceptive
flambeaux with their pink-shades had been put
away till nightfall. She was a strikingly hand-
some woman. Citaitquelqu'un. Her voice had
a peculiar power and a peculiar charm. She
seemed happy ; poverty and disaster had not
yet come upon her ; her sons were both full
of promise and achievement. There were to
be noticed few of the peculiarities of dress to
which Miss Corkrflui calls attention. Yet her
black silk bodice was as covered with large old-
fashioned medallions as is with orders on Garter
nights the brochette of the diplomat whose back
has been supple all through life.

Her clinging to youth, her efforts to mask
the advance of age, her horror for the stigmata
of physical decay were all characteristics which
she transmitted to her son Oscar. His books
are full of rhapsodical eulogies of youth ; he
never tires of satirising and condemning matiuity
and old age. In the same way her fondness for

The Life of Oscar Wilde

large, showy and curious articles of jewellery,
which, especially amongst the Jews, is a trait
which often characterises men and women of
genius, was directly transmitted to this son.

The gradual descent of this woman in the
social scale is one of the pathetic stories of
Uterary history. This ex-revolutionary had for
the society of the wealthy, the titled, the dis-
tinguished, the same pronounced hking which
was noticed in Oscar Wilde also. As long as it
was possible for her to do so, indeed imtil at last
broken down by disappointment and illness
she finally took to the bed where she breathed
her last after an agony of many months, she
held her drawing-rooms. But the imperial da}^
of Merrion Square, even the semi-aristocratic
reunions of Park Street, were of the past. In
the dingy house in Oakley Street, fit scene for
the unsp>eakable tragedies that Time held in
its lap, the gatherings were the shabby-genteel
burlesque of a Uterary salon. Miss Hamilton
has given a picture of such a reception in this
house, which shows us Lady Wilde just before
she resigned herself to desolation and soUtude : —

" I had an invitation," writes Miss Hamilton,
** to her Saturday ' At Homes,' and on a dull,
muggy December day, I reached the house.
The hour on the card said, ' From five to seven,'

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and it was past five when I knocked at the
door. The bell was broken. The narrow hall
was heaped with cloaks^ waterproofs, and
umbrellas, and from the door — for the reception-
rooms were on the ground-floor^ame a confus-
ing buzz of voices. Anglo-Irish and American,
Irish literary j)eople, to say nothing of a sprink-
ling of brutal Saxons, were crowded together
as thickly as sardines in a box. Red-shaded
lamps were on the mantelpiece, red curtains,
veiled doors and windows; and through this
darkness visible I looked vainly for the hostess.
Where was she ? Where was Lady Wilde ?
Then I saw her — a tall woman, slightly bent
with rheumatism, fantastically dressed in a
trained black and white checkered silk gown ;
from her head floated long, white tulle streamers,
mixed with ends of scarlet ribbon. What
glorious dark eyes she had I Even then, a]>d
she was over sixty, she was a strikingly handsome
woman. Though I was a perfect stranger to her,
she at once made me welcome, and introduced
me to someone she thought I would like to
know. She had the art de faire un salon. If
anyone was discovered sitting in a comer un-
noticed. Lady Wilde was sure to bring up some-
one to be introduced, and she never failed to
speak a few happy words, which made the

The Life of Oscar Wilde

stranger feel at home. She generally pre-
faced her introductions with some remarks
such as * Mr A., who has written a delightful
poem/ or Miss B., who is on the staff of * The
Snap-dragon/ or ' Mrs C, whose new novel
everyone is talking about/ As to her own talk
it was remarkably original^ sometimes daring^
and always interesting. Her talent for talk
was infectious ; everyone talked their best.
There was tea in the back room, but no one
seemed to care about eating and drinking. Some
forms of journalism had no attraction for her.
* I can't write/ I heard her say, ' about such
things as Mrs Green looked very well in blacky
and Mrs Black looked very well in green.' ''

Miss Hamilton also relates the following
characteristic anecdote about Lady Wilde.

'* When I was at Oakley Street one day, I
asked what time it was, as I wanted to catch a
train.

" ' Does anyone here,' asked Lady Wilde,
with one of her lofty glances, * know what time
it is ? We never know in this house about
Time.'

" This/' adds Miss Hamilton, " it seems to me,

^ws'a key to the way in which Lady Wilde

'looked at things. Trifles, everyday trifles, she

^considered quite beneath her; and yet trifles

V 76

The Life of Oscar Wilde

make up the stun of human life. She had a
horror of the ' miasma of the commonplace ' ;
her eyes were fixed on ideals, on heroes, ancient
and modem — ^and thus she missed much that
was l3dng near her, * close to her feet,' in her
fervent admiration of the dim, the distant and
the unapproachable."

The great caricaturist Dickens, whose notice
few of his distinguished contemporaries escaped,
seems to have studied some of Lady Wilde's
peculiarities from afar, and the results of his
observations may be found here and there in
his books.

After her marriage " Speranza," abandoning
poetry and the Young Ireland Movement of
which she had smig : —

" We stand in the light of a dawning day
With its glory creation flushing ;
And the life-currents up from the pris'ning clay,
Through the world's great heart are rushing.
While from peak to peak of the spirit land

A voice unto voice is calling :
' The night is over, the day is at hand,
And the fetters of earth are falling ! ' "

turned to prose.

In a letter dated from Oakley Street in '88
she writes to Mr D. J. 0*Donoghue the fol-
lowing accoimt of her Uterary and joumahstic
labours.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

''Dear Sir,

'' In answer to the inquiries contained in
your note I have to state that I contributed to
many periodicals in London, amongst others to
The University Magazine^ Tinsley's Magazine,
The Burlington Magazine, The Woman*s World,
The Queen, The Lady's Pictorial, The Pall Mall
Gazette, and others whose names I cannot now
recall. The more important writings of recent
years are : — ' Driftwood from Scandinavia '
(Bentley, i vol. 1867) ; ' Ancient Irish Legends *
(Ward and Downey, 2 vols. 1887) ; The
American Irish, a pohtical pamphlet, Dublin.

'* But I have recently devoted myself more
to hterature than to poUtics. Nationahty was
certainly the first awakener of any mental
power of genius within me, and the strongest
sentiments of my intellectual Uf e, but the present
state of Irish affairs requires the strong guiding
hand of men, there is no place any more for
the more passionate aspirations of a woman's
nature."

In another letter to Mr O'Donoghue she
states : " Also I did not write in 1844 for The
Nation, nor did I write ' The Chosen Leader.' "

The following is a Ust of the best known
among the books of Lady Wilde — " Poems by

The Life of Oscar Wilde

• Speranza/ " 1871 ; " Driftwood from Scan-
dinavia," 1884 ; *' Ancient Legends, Mystic
Channs and Superstitions of Ireland," (2 vols.
1887) ; *' Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages
of Ireland," 1890 ; " Social Studies," 1893.

" She further," wrote The Times biographer of
her after her death, " translated several French
and German works, and was the author of
' Ugo Bassi,' a tale of the Italian Revolution
m verse, published in 1857 ; * The First Tempta-
tion,' 1863 ; * The Glacier Land,' adapted from
Dumas ; ' The Wanderer and his Home,' adapted
from Lamartine; and 'Pictures from the First
French Revolution,' 1865-1875. In 1880 she
issued the concluding portion of her husband's

• Memoir of B6ranger.' "

She was never photographed ; and the only
portraits which survive are engravings from
pictures.

Many of her writings were never pubhshed.
Her poems are still read ; and that there is still
a demand for her two books, " Ancient Cures,"
and " Ancient Legends," is shown by the fact
that these two books were included in the
recently-issued catalogue of a large new book-
lending enterprise.

Both these books, however, according to
Lady Wilde's own statement, were largely taken

The Life of Oscar Wilde

from materials collected by, or for her husband.
" He would employ very many people/' she
related once, " schoolmasters in the villages
chiefly, who could speak both Irish and English^
to investigate and collect all the local traditions^
superstitions, etc., of the j)easantry. When he
died a great amount of material had been col-
lected, much of which I have pubUshed in the
last year or so in the volumes entitled ' Ancient
Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland,' and
* Ancient Legends of Ireland/ Sir WiUiam had
a passion for such research ; and in recognition of
his services the Royal Irish Academy gave him
its gold medal."

This detailed investigation into the immediate
parentage and remoter afl&nities and relation-
ships of Oscar Wilde has afforded us many data
which will go towards enabling the student of
his life to understand some points in his complex
character as well as a few of his peculiarities.
Of these some came to him by direct inheritance,
in his blood, so to say ; others were the result
of that instinctive imitation of their parents
and such of their kinsfolk as are held up as
examples for their reverence and admiration
which all children practise. Psychological
influences have also been indicated.

It may be well in conclusion to sum up under

The Life of Oscar Wilde

their different headings certain characteristics
of his which we are now able to trace back to
their source. Under " direct inheritance," or
''transmission by blood/' may, perhaps, be
dassed his literary capacity, his gifts of poetry,
languages, of ready mastery of difficult studies,
his love of the beautiful, the soimd common-
sense of his normal periods, his family and
personal pride, and his moral courage in the
face of danger, but also an indifference to the
dangers of alcoholism, an aversion from failure,
physical, social and mental, an exaggerated
esteem, on the other hand, for wealth, titles and
social success, a tolerance for moral laxness.

The instinctive imitation of childhood may
explain his love for eccentricity in dress, his
professions of an adoration for youth and a
hatred for old age, his claim that th^perusual
of a single book entirely revolutionised his
mentality.

This rough classification is only advanced
tentatively, as a suggestion, and with all due
awe for the complex mysteries of the human
soul. The psychology of an Oscar Wilde is not
to be resolved into elemental factors by human
intelligence. But the few data arrived at may
render the problem of that psychology less
bewildering, and at the same time, because of
r 8i

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the very dimness of the Ught which they cast,
impress us with the magnitude and the obscurity
of the problem. Now it is not right or lawful for
man to judge or to condemn that which he
cannot understand. When God withholds His
Ught either on the acts or on the motives of a
fellow man it means nothing more than this, that
He reserves the judging of that man's acts
and thoughts for His own supreme tribunal.

CHAPTER V

Oicar ^M^lde's Christening— The Selection of his Names — His
Later Dislike of them — ^No. i Meirion Sqnare — ^The
Merrion Sqnare Jarvey — Oscar Wilde and the Cab-drivers
— Oscar and lus Brother — Oscar's Sister — His Poem on
her Death — His Early Upbringing — His Precocity — His
Knowledge of French — ^His Home-Life— An Artificial
Atmosphere— Dangerous Environment — Six William
Wilde's Love of Nature — Oscar's Abhorrence from Nature
— His Enunciations on the Subject — Oscar WOde's
Writings, Sincere, not Paradoxical.

Such was the parentage of the child who was
born on i6th October 1854, at No. i Merrion
Square, in the motimful city of Dublin ; whose
advent, because he was a boy, was a disappoint-
ment to his mother, and who for a long time after
his birth was treated as a girl, talked to as a girl,
dressed as a girl. His father did not share his
wife's caprice, and for his second son selected
names of singular viriUty. These names were
so chosen as to proclaim to the world the lad's
dose association by blood with the history of
Ireland. Oscar is good Celtic, it is a name
closely connected with Irish legend and record.
And here another negation is necessary. Oscar
Wilde was not the god-son of the Duke of

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Ostergotland^ although Speranza allowed it to
be understood that it had been after this princely
friend of the family that the boy was called.
People Uving in DubHn who remember the
christening and all the circumstances connected
with that ceremony have stated that at the
time of Oscar's birth the Wildes were not
acquainted with the gentleman who is now the
King of Sweden. The m5rth was one of those
Schwaermereien on the part of Lady Wilde, to
which reference has already been made. It is
certain that before Oscar's birth the personality
of the poet-prince must have greatly occupied
Speranza's thoughts for the personal resemblance
between Oscar Wilde and the King of Sweden
was one which struck everyone who knew the
two men. More particularly was this resem-
blance a striking one between the prince as a
student at Upsala and Oscar Wilde as a student
at Oxford. On page 39 of Dr Josef Linck's
biography of " King Oscar" (" Konimg Oscar,"
Adolf Bonnier, Stockholm) there appeared a
portrait of the young duke, which vividly
reminds one of Oscar Wilde at the same age.
However, it appears to be the fact that the
child's name was chosen by his father, who
wanted him to have a good ancient Irish name.
For the same reason he also caused his son to

Photo by Elliot Jt Fry.

\V. G. WILLS, PAINTKR AND DRAMATIST. COUSIN TO OSCAR WILDE.

face pag9 b6.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

be christened Fingal and O'Flaherty ; the latter
from those "wild O'Flahertys" from whom
Cronciwell's soldiers in an addendmn to the
Litany prayed God to deliver them. At the
same time the additional name of Wills was
bestowed upon the boy. The motive of this
selection was the same. It was to affirm his
Irish nationality. The Wills family were wealthy
connty people who had been settled for over
three hmidred years in Ireland. It was a
General Wills of this family, who, with General
Carpenter, crushed the legitimate hopes of the
loyal party at the Battle of the Boyne. With
this family the Wildes were closely connected,
and in a near degree Oscar Wilde was cousin
to that gifted man, W. G. Wills, the dramatist,
painter and poet. On the two cousins the
wonderful of dramaturgy had descended to-
gether with an alUed strain of eccentricity,
which, however, differed in its developments in
the two favoured yet unhappy kinsmen.

The second son of William Wilde by his
marriage to Jane Francesca Elgee was accord-
ingly christened, Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills
Wilde. In his youth and early manhood he
was proud of these sounding patronymics.
Later on he discarded the use of them. They
irritated him. To refer to them was to pro-

The Life of Oscar Wilde

voke his great anger. They classified him;
they labelled him ; they wrote him down as
de son village ; and this was intolerable to him,
to his cosmopolitan sense^ to his disdain for
partisanships^ politics and protestations. He
had a strong aversion from what was local in
interest, from what was outrS and self-assertive ;
and in all these ways his Irish Christian names
offended his taste. For the rest Oscar Wilde
never wiUingly placed himself on the losing side
in any division of men. Irishmen and Irish
matters have always been as mipopular in the
London society to which he aspired, as they are
in lower spheres of the Anglo-Saxon Mob ; and
although Oscar Wilde never denied his nation-
aUty he took particular care not to let it trans-
spire. In some circles in Dublin it is held that
he was an ardent Irish patriot, that the mantle
that Speranza wore in '48 had descended upon
his broad shoulders, that it was this very pride
as an Irishman which prevented him from
fleeing from a British Court of Justice when the
opportimity offered itself to him so to do. If
this was so he was able to dissimulate here also
with astonishing skill.

It was amongst luxurious siuroundings that
the child was reared. His father's house is one
of the best houses in the best part of Dublin —

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and good houses in the Irish capital are very good
indeed. They are mute witnesses^ as are also
the fine broad streets to-day, of former opulence
and splendour. There are few houses in London
or other big Eng^h cities which can compare
in comfort, ampUtude, elegance and decoration
with a very large number of the DubUn bourgeois
palaces. No. i Merrion Square, which is a
comer house, is situated in one of the pleasantest
and most convenient parts of the town. From
the front the windows overlook the Merrion
Square Gardens ; there is a large garden at the
back, and on the right is Lincoln Place. The
house, which is now occupied by a dentist, is
painted red on the Lincoln Place front, and the
windows which look out on this side are of an
Oriental style of architecture. It is a big, soUd,
substantial bourgeois house which makes some
pretensions to originaUty and artisticness. It
looks the ideal residence for a successful pro-
fessional man who stands well at court, but it
hardly strikes one as the fit dweUing-place for
a revolutionary poetess, or as the birthplace
of a man of genius who over shifting, Uf ting deeps
and by circuitous routes was to come to a death-
bed so forlorn and sombre. No tablet yet records
the fact that in this house was bom the author
of "The Soul of Man,'* or of " De Profundis" ;

The Life of Oscar Wilde

but on the tablets of the people's memory that
record is engraved. Just opposite the house,
at the comer of the gardens, is a cab-stand, and
amongst the drivers is an elderly man who,
when he sees any stranger looking up at No. i
Merrion Square, touches his hat and says that
his honour is no doubt looking at the house
where " Sir Oscar Wilde '* was bom. The
stranger may answer that he did not know
that the poet had been knighted also, and then
the jarvey sa3rs that " Sure and he was," that
he was a great poet besides, and that as a lad,
he had often driven the gentleman. He speaks
of it with pride, as a thing to be remembered,
and he has nothing but good things to say of the
young man who was kind and genial, and who
paid handsomely for each " set-down." Oscar
Wilde was alwa3rs a good friend to cab-drivers.
At the time of his trial he was known as " one
of the best riders in Chelsea" amongst the
cabmen. He must, in his opulent days, have
spent many hundred pounds a year in cabs. At
one period he used to take a cab by the day, and
the first address that he used to give to the
driver was the Biu'lington Arcade where there
was a florist's shop, where every day he fetched
for himself a buttonhole flower costing half-a-
guinea, and another costing half-a-crown for his

The Life of Oscar Wilde

cabman for the day. The Dublin cabman does
not recollect that his yoimg patron had any
partiality for buttonhole flowers, but he re-
members that even in those da3rs, Oscar Wilde
would not drive in a cab which was drawn by a
white horse, as he considered this most unlucky.
For the rest, he speaks of the young man, as of
all the Wilde family, with respect and regret.
" It was a sad day," he says, " when they went
across the water."

As children the brothers William and Oscar
were great friends ; and Oscar Wilde in after Ufe
frequently spoke of their mutual attachment.
" I had a toy bear," he once related, " of which
I was very fond indeed, so fond that I used to
take it to bed with me, and I thought that
nothing could make me more unhappy than
to lose my bear. Well, one day Willy asked me
for it ; and I was so fond of Willy that I gave it to
him, I remember, without a pang. Afterwards,
however, the enormity of the sacrifice I had
made impressed itself upon me. I considered
that such an act merited the greatest gratitude
and love in return, and whenever Willy crossed
me in any way I used to say : " Willy, you don't
deserve my bear. Give me back my bear."
And for years afterwards, after we had grown
up, whenever we had a slight quarrel, I used to

The Life of Oscar Wilde

say the same : " Willy, you don't deserve my
bear. You must give me back my bear." He
used to laugh at this recollection.

A third child was bom to Lady Wilde, the
daughter she had longed for. '' She was like
a golden ray of sunshine dancing about our
home/' Oscar Wilde used to say of this sister.
She did not live to reach womanhood ; her loss
was the greatest grief that Lady Wilde knew
until. . . . One of Oscar Wilde's most beautiful
poems, a Requiescat, which appears in his first
volume of poems, is dedicated to the girl's
memory. He writes of her : —

" She hardly knew
She was a woman.
So softly she grew."

There is one verse which renders a thought

which must have come to all who mourn the

dead : —

" Cofi&nboard, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast.
I vex my heart alone ;
She is at rest."

Already as a very small boy Oscar gave proof
of great cleverness. A great noveUst of Irish
birth relates how as a boy he accompanied his
mother to call on Lady Wilde, who was just
then staying at a country house on the borders

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of Mayo and Galway, where Sir William Wilde
had an estate. The caller asked Lady Wilde
about the boys, and she answered : " Willy is
all right, but Oscar is wonderful, wonderful.
He can do anything.'* He was then nine years
of age. In an article which Ernest La Jeunesse
wrote about him after his death in Paris, the
French critic referring to Wilde's wonderful
knowledge and capacity said : " II savait tout."
Indeed, few men have so impressed their con-
temporaries with the feeling of omniscience.

In a biographical notice of Oscar Wilde, which
appeared in 1891, is the following passage, refer-
ring to his early education.
. " The son of two remarkable people, Mr Wilde
had a remarkable upbringing. From his earliest
childhood his principal companions were his
father and mother and their friends. Now
wandering about Ireland with the former in
quest of archaeological treasures, now listening
in Lady Wilde's salon to the wit and thought of
Ireland, the boy, before his eighth year had
learnt the ways to ' the shores of old romance.'
had seen all the apples plucked from the tree of
knowledge, and had gazed with wondering eyes
into ' the younger day.' This upbringing suited
his idiosyncrasy ; indeed, with his tempera-
ment it is impossible to conceive what else could

The Life of Oscar Wilde

literary career in England this was not a good
thing. The most successful writer knows only
the tongue in which he writes. Linguistic
attainment spoils the mother-language for the
unilingual reader. The average Englishman
cannot " follow " the writer who at times thinks
in a tongue which is not his own. He revolts
against similes^ deductions^ points of view which
are not English. The man whose books translate
well into foreign languages is not likely to be
very highly appreciated in his own country.
That is why, perhaps^ it has been said that
posterity begins at the frontier. There are
exceptions of course. Gerard de Nerval's
translation of Goethe's " Faust " was such a
beautiful work that Goethe himself wrote to
the French poet to compliment him on the
authorship of the French " Faust." But
" Faust " is in itself an exception. It is what
the Germans call a " Weltstueck/' a term, by
the way, which they have also appUed to
" Salom6." Shakespeare reads badly in foreign
translations even where the son of Hugo, under
Victor Hugo's guidance, writes the version.
Dickens never appealed to foreign nations in
any degree equivalently to his wonderful in-
fluence on his countrymen.

It was an artificial atmosphere in which the

The Life of Oscar Wilde

ladj Oscar, was reared. It is wonderful that he
escaped that taint of precocity for which the
English dictionary has another and a less
euphonious term. It is more wonderful still
that imtil his inherent madness broke out he
escaped the taint of moral laxness which infected
the air of his father's house. Here high think-
ing did not go hand in hand with plain living.
The house was a hospitable one ; it was a house
of opulence and carouse ; of late suppers and
deep drinking ; of careless talk and example.
His father's gallantries were the talk of Dublin.
Even his mother, although a woman of spotless
life and honour, had a loose way of talking
which might have been full of danger to her
sons. A sajdng of hers is still remembered in
Dublin, which gives an echo of the way in which
her attitude of revolt against the accepted and
the conmionplace prompted her to mischievous
talk. " There has never been a woman yet in
this world who wouldn't have given the top
off the milkjug to some man if she had mrt
the right one." The mother's salon, the father^
supper-table were frequented by boozy anc
boisterous Bohemians, than whom no city
more than Dubhn furnishes stranger specimens.
How free was the conversation which went on
there in the presence of the two lads may be

The Life of Oscar Wilde

gathered from a remark which Oscar Wilde once
made to a fellow-undergraduate at Trinity
College. "Come home with me/* he said, "I
wstfit to introduce you to my mother. We
have founded a Society for the Suppression of
Virtue." This statement, of course, partook
of the nature of those remarks as to which a
Prefect of Police in Paris once asked Charles
Baudelaire, the poet, why a man of his genius
often spoke in so fooUsh a way. " Pour 6tonner
les sots," answered Baudelaire. " It was to
astonish fools," without any doubt, that Oscar
Wilde so spoke on that occasion, for there was
no cleaner-Uved young man than he. But his
words show the prevaihng moral atmosphere at
home, and the dangers to which he was exposed.
And no doubt also that having been exposed all
through his youth to the contagion of im-
moraUty his powers of resistance against moral
disease had been so weakened that when the
attack came he had not the strength to over-
come it. There is a great analogy between
physical and mental diseases. This record
should teach a lesson to parents which they
would do well to lay to heart.

By his father as a lad he was taught to admire
the beauties of Nature, but it did not appear
in after Ufe that he shared Sir William's en-

The Life of Oscar Wilde

thusiasm. Though he wrote much and well
about flowers and birds and the beauties of
the land imder the moving seasons^ he used
to describe the coimtry as " rather tedious '* ;
and to the end remained a dweller in cities.
Atmospheric effects^ the planets and the stars,
the lights on land and s^, though he recognised
their utility for poetical description, certainly
never aroused emotions within him. Of Sir
William, on the other hand, it is related that
one night after everybody had retired to rest
in the house which he owned at Howth, at the
seaside near Dublin, a terrific storm having
broken out overhead, he dragged a reluctant
guest from his bed and up to the top of the
house, there to admire with him the wonderful
effects of the Ughtning flashes over the sea.
" He kept me there for nearly an hour," related
this guest afterwards, '' and showed the greatest
enthusiasm for the spectacle. I was far from
sharing his excitement. It was drenching wet,
and we were both lightly clad. Yet he kept
appealing to me to join him in saying that it
was the most wonderful night that I had ever
spent." Oscar held that the monotony of tife
spent amidst rustic surroundings was fatal to
artistic production. ''One can only write in
dties," he wrote in a letter to one of his friends,
G 97

The Life of Oscar Wilde

" the country hanging on one walls in the grey
mists of Corot, or the opal mornings that
Daubigny has given us/' In the same letter^
he speaks of '* the splendid whirl and swirl of
life in London." His dishke for Nature and
the natural Ufe as contrasted to artificiality;
and that mode of existence which claims to be
the outcome of the highest civilisation developed
as he grew older. The utterances of Vivian
(through whose mouth Oscar Wilde speaks)
where he decries Nature in "The Decay of
L}dng'' are not so much brilliant paradox.
They are the sincere expressions of Oscar
Wilde's feeUng on the subject. The passage
from the first essay in " Intentions '* may be
quoted here.

" Vivian : Enjoy Nature ! I am glad to say
that I have entirely lost that faculty. People
tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than
we loved her before ; that it reveals her secrets
to us ; and that after a careful study of Corot
and Constable we see things in her that had
escaped our observation. My own experience
is that the more we study Art, the less we care
for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is
Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities^
her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely

The Life of Oscar Wilde

unfinished condition. Nature has good in-
tentions^ of course, but, as Aristotle once said,
she cannot carry them out. When I look at a
landscape, I cannot help seeing all its defects.
It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is
so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had
no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our
gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place.
As for the mfinite variety of Nature, that is a
pure myth. • . . "

A little lower down, Vivian continues : —
"But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is
hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful
black insects. Why even Morris's poorest
workman could make you a more comfortable
seat than the whole of Nature can. ... If
Nature had been comfortable mankind would
never have invented architecture, and I prefer
houses to the open air. In a house we all feel
of the proper proportions. Everything is sub-
ordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our
pleasure. Egotism itself, which is indoor Ufe."

People have been wont to point to " Inten-
tions" as masterpieces of paradox. The truth
is that these essays contain in paradoxical form
Wilde's most orthodox creeds. The vigour with
which he enunciates his opinions proceeds, no

The Life of Oscar Wilde

doubt, from the knowledge that there is much
pretence, not to say hjrpocrisy, in the general
definitions of what is good and beautiful. This
hypocrisy stirred his indignation and gave
impetus to his pen. What ordinary man or
woman of the world really cares for Nature
in preference to urban haunts ? What sincerity
is there in the gushing rhapsodies about the
beauties of the country to which it is fashionable
to give utterance. How many times does the
London dame or squire look up to the stars ?

zoo

CHAPTER VI

Pdrtora Royal School — Its Sectarian Character — Prompt Dis-
Dlnsioiimeiit — Oscar's Ptofidency — Incapacity for Arith-
metic— His Appearance as a Boy — His Precocity in a
Dangenms Talent — His Fondness for Dress — His
Unpopularity — His Eager Thirst for Knowledge — His
excellent Character — ^Bdatriculation at T.C.D. — ^His Re-
potation there— The Berkeley Gold Medal— The Classical
Scholarship— His Marks— Why he left T.C.D.— He goes
to Oxford — ^A Tnming-Point in his Life — ^The Possible
Dangers of a Student's Life — ^His University Achieve-
ments— -' Not a Reading Man."

The school which was selected for Oscar Wilde
by his parents was a school founded by an
English prince, the father of that *' Pretender "
whom one of the bo3^s ancestors had helped to
overthrow. Possibly it was Speranza's great
detestation of the "soulless iconoclast/' Crom-
well^ that prompted her to send her sons to be
alumni in a house of which Eang Charles was
the founder, patron and benefactor, Portora
Royal School, Enniskillen. Motives of economy
may also have dictated this choice ; for compared
with the fees of an EngUsh pubUc school, the
charges at Portora are very small. There are
three terms in the year, and the fees for each
boarder — " a considerable reduction being made

loz

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in the case of brothers" — are only £17, los.
per term. According to the present synopsis
of the course of instruction the work of the
higher forms is mainly directed towards pre-
paration for the universities, and especially for
Trinity College, DubUn. The school is under
the government of The Fermanagh Protestant
Board of Education, of which the Right Rev.
The Lord Bishop of Clogher, D.D., is the
Chairman, and amongst the members of which
are the Rector of Enniskillen and another
Church of England clergyman. It is a sectarian
school; for we notice amongst the provisions
of the "Course of Instruction" there that:
" ReUgious training is regarded as of supreme
importance. The boarders are regularly
instructed in Divinity, and on Sundays attend
the respective Protestant churches in charge
of responsible masters." From what precedes
it is easy to imagine the bias with which English
and Irish history must have been taught in
this school, what Whiggish principles must have
been instilled hour by hour into the pupils'
minds, and what the prevailing opinion among
Oscar's pastors and masters on Irish Nationalism,
and the doings of the Young Ireland Party
may have been. For instance, one may fancy
the views of the Lord Bishop of Clogher, D.D.,

102

OXAR WII.DE AS A IAD. (FROM A RF.D CHALK DRAWING.)

To face pajv IttS.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

on " The Glorious young Meagher." At first
bewilderment must have come to the lad, who
had been trained to admire his mother for the
part she had taken in a movement which to the
Right Rev. the Lord Bishop and the rest of
The Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education
must have appeared in much the same light as
did to the Lord Archbishop of Munster the
proceedings of John of Leyden and the other
Anabaptists in 1536. Bewilderment would give
place to an insight into the insincerity of most
poUtical professions, and from this to C3niicism
and general disbelief would be but one step.
" If the gods of our faith be Uars, in whom shall
we trust ? "

Oscar went to this school when he was eleven
years old. Lady Wilde's description of him as
a wonderful boy who could do anything seems
to have been justified by his early achievements
at Portora. In 1868 he was already very high
up in the school ; he had, indeed, already reached
the third class in his first year. It is recorded
of him that he got " quicker into a book than
any boy that ever lived." At the same time
he was a great d\mce in the mathematical class.
He has been described by a schoolfellow of his,
who is now a most distinguished man, as
"absolutely incapable of mathematics." In

103

The Life of Oscar Wilde

arithmetic he was hopelessly bad, and, as by the
regulations of the school a certain proficiency in
arithmetic was an indispensable qualification for
the winning of certain prizes for scholarship, it
was a usual thing to see young Oscar Wilde, on
the eve of entering some examination, being
coached in the elements of mathematical science
by one of the jimior masters. This early incapa-
city for figures explains much of the reckles^ess
of his after life. The careful and parsimonious
of this world are by instinct mathematicians, at
least as far as the four great rules are concerned.
It is recorded of most spendthrifts, on the other
hand, that the faculty of calculation is an element
lacking in their mental composition. Has the
world's history any record of an extravagant
mathematician ?

Oscar Wilde was a big boy, very tall for his
age, and distinctly heavy of build. One of his
schoolfellows says that '" he used to flop about
ponderously." He was not popular with the
other boys. For one thing, he never played any
games. In later Ufe he used to say that he
objected to cricket because the attitudes as-
sumed were so indecent. He never rowed on
the lake ; and he had for the musketry instructor
and the drill sergeant contempt mingled with
pity. His manner was very reserved, and he

104

The Life of Oscar Wilde

used to keep aloof from the other boys. Another
characteristic which made for his unpopiilarity
amongst his schoolfellows^ just as in later life
it raised up against him so many implacable
enemies^ was the extraordinary gift he had of
saying trenchant tttngs^bout others. He was
a very cleveFboy at giving nicknames. He was
the ironical sponsor to the whole school from
the Rev. William Steele, D.D., the headmaster,
down to the smallest boy in class ib. As a
man, few wits have ever said cleverer and at the
same time more biting things about their con-
temporaries. This capacity of his and his
ruthless exercise thereof account for much of
the hatred that is still aUve against him years
after his lonely death. Of one very famous
contemporary Irish writer he remarked : "He
has no enemies, but he is intensely disUked by
his friends.'' Of the son of a famous pianist
he once said, when the fact of this parentage
was stated to him : ** Well, I am glad that he
has managed to survive it." Of an extra-
ordinary Russian Jew who at various times
essayed to fill in modem London the r61e of a
Maecenas, a HeUogabalus, and other less worthy
parts, and who hated Oscar Wilde with an
intensity of hatred that almost made him
interesting, he declared : " He came to London

105

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in the hopes of founding a salon. He has
succeeded only in opening a restaurant." He
used to use this man's name as the symbol of

ugliness. " As ugly as '' was an expression

constantly in his mouth. He described him as
a " foetus in a bottle." In " Intentions " one
finds many compUments^ h rebours, addressed to
various of the prominent writers of the time.
We are told that Hall Caine writes at the top of
his voice; that Rudyard Kipling reveals Ufe
" by splendid flashes of vulgarity " ; that as one
turns over the pages of one of James Payn's
novels, ''the suspense of the author becomes
quite unbearable " ; that Henry James writes
fiction as if it were a painful duty ; and that
Marion Crawford has immolated himself on the
altar of local colour. These remarks are all
very clever, but they are not gratifying to the
people about whom they were made, and would
not tend to increase the satirist's number of
friends. But Oscar Wilde seemed to go out of
his way to offend people, not individuals alone,
but whole sections of society. What soUdtor,
for instance, being present at the performance
of his comedy, "The Importance of Being
Earnest," and hearing his sneer at the social
standing of the profession, as it was put into
Lady Brackneirs mouth, but would feel a personal

io6

The Life of Oscar Wilde

grievance against the author for a gratuitous
slight ? These are the words referred to :

''Lady Bracknell: — Uarkhy, Markby &
Ifarkby ? A firm of the very highest position
in their profession. Indeed, I am told that one
of the Mr Markbys is occasionally to be seen
at dinner-parties/'

Elsewhere every stockbroker gets an un-
necessary wound to his self-esteem. Indeed,
few of the professions escape the lash of satire
which seems prompted merely by the contempt
of a man professing to voice aristocratic and
d^^ant society, and its alleged disdain for men
and women who have to work for a Uving. He
carried his imprudence to the extent of in-
sulting journalists with tedious insistence, thus
foaling the very trumpets of modem reputation.
There are many points in Oscar Wilde's career
which allow of a comparison between him and
the great Napoleon ; and this deUberate deUght
in provoking enmities, this sheer reckless and
uncharitable combativeness, is not the least
striking characteristic common to both. In
both men it arose from a delusion as to the
extent of their powers, froma spirit of prepotence,
from a most imprudent contempt of the
aggregate force of the individual adversaries
whom they so joyfully and so wilfully raised

107

The Life ot Oscar Wilde

up against themselves. This policy of mischi^
did not succeed in the hands of Napoleon ; it
was therefore not likely to be more successful
in the hands of Oscar >^de. The latter was
fond of reading the '' Maximes '' of the Due de la
Rochefoucault, and might have remembered to
his advantage that the epigranunatist said that
the man who thinks that he can do without
society makes a mistake, but that the man
who thinks that society cannot do without him
makes a still greater mistake.

Although he is remembered at Portora as
having been very clever in giving nicknames to
others, none of his schoolfellows can recall what
was his own particular soubriquet. He seems
to have been generally known as '' Oscar." As
to his brother, Willy, he was known as " Blue-
Blood.'' He was not a tidy boy ; he had
inherited some of the paternal carelessness about
his appearance, and having one day been re-
monstrated with for the umber of his neck and
hands, declared very proudly that his skin was
dark, not because it was dirty, but because of
the blue blood in the veins of the Wildes. This
anecdote might have been left unrecorded, but
for the fact that it shows that the Wilde bo3rs
held a high opinion of their social standing, and

I may explain Oscar's subsequent determined

\ io8

The Life of Oscar Wilde

efforts to establish himself in London society^ as
also his contempt, referred to above, for people
whose blood was not blue, and who had to work
for their maintenance. And here it may once
more be repeated that the exigencies of this
biography make it impossible to discard any
fact, on which friendship or reverence might
plead for silence, when that fact can serve to
throw Ught upon the complex problem of the
character which we are engaged in studying.

Already in those days young Oscar Wilde
showed that fondness for distinguished attire
which ever marked him in life. He is re-
membered at Portora as the only boy there who
used to wear a top hat. " It was always a
very fashionable hat, of the latest style.'* All
the boys at Portora were provided, by school
r^ulations as to the outfit, with one Black
Silk Hat, but this was for Sunday wear only.
Oscar never discarded his. He was always very
well dressed, and wore his hair long. '* He had
a good wisp of hair I " is said of him still in
Emiiskillen. He did not appear to be very
friendly with his orother Willy. " He was very
superior in his manner towards Willy.** The
latter was much more poptdar with the boys.
The little boys at Portora, especially, had the
greatest afiection for Willy Wilde. Even in

109

The Life of Oscar Wilde

those early days he had all the charming talents
de socUU which afterwards won him much
success. He used to tell stories to the children^
and he used to play the piano for them.

Oscar was considered exceedingly clever in
literature — ^that is tc say in his knowledge of
books. At the same time the future author of
" Intentions " never showed any superiority in
composition. " He never stood out in essays/'
remarks one of his masters, who adds : " Oscar
Wilde was never looked upon as a formidable
competitor by the boys who went in for examina-
tions in Portora school." His conduct was
imiformly good. There was not a breath of a
complaint about him in any way, except some
short time before he left the school, when, as
one of his schoolfellows relates, " he got into
an awful row with the headmaster. He had
cheeked old Steele something awful." That
there was nothing of the decadent about Oscar
Wilde in his school-days is the Jbianimous
declaration of many men who were boys at
school with him. He was a great reader, and
assimilated what he read in a remarkable
manner. He used to get through a book with
a speed that astonished everybody; and what
he had read thus rapidly, he used to remember.
He read nothing but English books, and these

The Life of Oscar Wilde

were generally classical novels. He displayed
no particular ef&dency in French in those days.
He had a great fondness for handsome books
and choice editions. " When he came so pro-
minently before the world as an aesthete/'
relates a Don at T.C.D, "we all tried to
remember any indication that he had given as
a lad of a taste for beautiful things^ and the only
thing that we could recall in this connection was
that he always had most expensive copies of class-
books. He had^ for instance^ a beautiful large
paper edition of ^schyltis.*' During his last
year at Portora^ when he was a lad of sixteen,
his eager thirst for knowledge and his great
receptivity were matters of observation and
comment. Often when Mr Purser was instruct-
ing the class m history or in geography Oscar
Wilde would contrive by means of some cleverly
put question to lead the master into a dis-
quisition on some topic on which he desired to
gain information. The subject in hand would
be forgotten; the master, ever prompted by
his pupil, would unbosom himself of his store
of learning. Sometimes the whole of the horn:
would be thus absorbed. At other times the
master would bring the discussion back to the
subject of the lesson, and then it was a sight to
see the lad, all alert, thinking and planning

The Life of Oscar Wilde !

how, next day, he could turn the master once
more on to the question in which he needed
instruction — questions often as obstruse as the
relative definitions of nominalism and realism.

In arithmetic he made no progress at all
while at school, and many boys remember the |

efforts which Mr Purser used to make to cram i

him with the elementary rules.

It was, perhaps, in the competition for the
Gold Medal which is the great distinction at
Portora that Oscar Wilde displayed his peculiar
capacity for mastering the contents of a classical
book. " In the viva voce/' says one of his
competitors, " which was on the Agamemnon
of ^schylus, he simply walked away from us
all/' He gained 25 per cent, higher marks in
this examination than the nearest to him.

In October 1871 Oscar Wilde matriculated i

at Trinity College, Dublin. In the matricula-
tion examination where he obtained the second
place his marks in the various subjects were
as follows: (The maxim nmnber of marks
obtainable in each subject was 10.)

Greek, Two Papers — 8, 8.
Latin, Two Papers — 8, 7.
Latin Composition — ^4.
English Composition — 5.
History— 8.
Arithmetic — 2.
iia

The Life of Oscar Wilde

His total was thus 50. The total obtained by
another Portora boy, the gentleman who is now
the Junior Bursar of Trinity College, and who
ranks as one of the most distinguished classical
scholars in the country, was 65. On the second
day of the examination, where the subjects were
the Higher Classics, Oscar Wilde obtained 46
marks ; whilst the boy who had so outstripped
him on the previous day in the rudiments only
obtained 36 marks. Oscar Wilde's neglect of
the rudiments was always a feature of his
character.

He is registered on the matriculation book
of Trinity College in the following terms and
under the headings given : —

MATRICULATION ENTRY

Jokmmn MmUi Prasisdor Primmius

Dim Msnsii A4mi$$ormm Nimtinm Qualiimiu Fidsi ProfsssumM

Oct 10 OKar Wilde P. I. C.

PmiMS P^mm QuaiiUii$t NmiMtMium Loem Astsiu Anni

Wm. PhyacUn Dublin 16

He was at that time just within six days of
his seventeenth birthday. At this time of his
life, therefore, Oscar Wilde displayed side by
side, with a brilliant capacity for reading and
understanding the classics, a not quite first-rate
knowledge of the elements of classical knowledge.
He was undistinguished in Latin composition,
which exacts this mastery of the rudiments,
a 2x3

The Life of Oscar Wilde

mediocre in English composition^ and un-
satisfactory in arithmetic. It is related of
Emile Zola, it may be remembered, that he was
rejected at his examination for the baccalaureat
de^ee for inefficiency in composition.

During his year's attendance at Trinity
College, Dublin, his conduct was irreproachable.
"He left this College," says one of the Dons
who was a fellow-student of his, " with the very
highest character." Beyond the foolish remark
of his, that invitation of a fellow-undergraduate
to come to his father's house, which has been
quoted above, not a single thing is remembered
against him. It was for this reason, no doubt,
that no official cognisance was taken by Trinity
College, Dublin, of his public disgrace; his
name was not deleted on any of the honourable
records on which his capacity, excellence and
industry had inscribed it. At Portora Royal
College, on the other hand, a resolution was
taken by The Fermanagh Protestant Board of
Education in virtue of which the inscription of
honour of his name on the stone tablets of
the schoolhouse would have been erased, when,
mirahUe dictu, it transpired that outraged Nature
herself had forestalled The Fermanagh Pro-
testant Board of Education in the execution
of this salutary sacrifice. The slab on which

114

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's name was inscribed in letters of
gold had cracked right across the ill-reputed
words : Nature had effaced the name. In a
less enUghtened place, amongst the ignorant
and superstitious Irish who are not Protestants,
the circumstance might have been hailed as a
miracle.

He was considered a highly gifted, amiable
young man, likely to win a high place as a scholar.
In the various college examinations he con-
tinually distinguished himself. He was first out
of fourteen in the First Rank in the Michaelmas
Prize Examination 1872 ; in Hilary Term he
was third of the First Rank. The gentleman,
now a Privy Councillor, who was Solicitor
General under the last Tory Administration,
was an undergraduate of the same standing as
Oscar Wilde, and with the other junior freshman,
competed in the same examinations. He did
not, however, emerge from the Second Rank.
In later life these two men were to be once more
in fierce competition, the fiercest competition,
perhaps, that has ever been waged in the Old
Bailey Court between a witness for the prosecu-
tion and a counsel for the defence ; and here too
Oscar Wilde was to hold the superior rank. It
has been stated that the barrister has admitted
that imtil towards the very end of his cross-
es

The Life of Oscar WUde

examination of the prosecutor he felt that he
had had the worst of it all along. He was just
about to sit down when an answer of fatal
insolence and folly brought the whole of Wilde's
splendid defence of himself crumbUng to the
ground^ gave an opening to his more patient
adversary^ and exposed him to devastation and
ruin. This cross-examination of Oscar Wilde
in the Queensbeny trial is still eageriy studied
by advocates as a lesson how a barrister should
act when brought face to face with a hostile
witness of such consununate readiness^ power
and nerve. The barrister's tritunph in this
case was a complete one ; but the reason for that
was rather because the witness had become
intoxicated with his own trimnph throughout,
lost his head in consequence of this^ and in an
imprudent moment destroyed the whole effect
of his previous answers. The report teaches
what patience can do^ and a knowledge of the
rudiments ; and in that sense is a triumph for
the counsel. He might well have lost his head.
He did not. He waited and watched, and in
the words of a barrister who was sitting in
court at his side, " pounced like a hawk,*' upon
the witness when the long-waited-for oppor-
tunity arose.
Amongst certain men, prominent at Trinity

zi6

The Life of Oscar Wilde

G>llege, Oscar Wilde was held '' an average sort
of man/' and surprise was expressed when he
came to the front. Such surprise can only
have proceeded from that innocency and ignor-
ance of the things of this world which are the
most beautiful traits in the character of the
deeply learned. Success in the worlds the
acclaim of the populace do not go to the modest
and retiring scholar. It is an age of advertise-
ment, and even the greatest talents must con-
form to the commercial exigencies of the hour.
One may see any day in any of the big public
libraries, the shabby, hungered, half-bUnded man
of great learning and knowledge elbowed by
the secretary of some popular novelist who
is collecting iacts for his master. The secretary
is well-dressed, well-fed, and shines with the
reflected light of his employer, who, very pro-
baUy, earns in one hour more than the great
scholar can gain in a week of laborious days and
nights.

In a letter written by Lady Wilde to Mr
O'Donoghue she begs him not to omit to
mention in writing a biographical notice of her
that both her sons were Gold MedaUists, '' a
distinction," she said, ** of which they are both
very proud.'' Oscar's gold medal was the
Berkdey Medal. This prize was founded by

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the famous Bishop Berkeley, who denied the
existence of matter, and of whom Lord B5rron
wrote that when he said that there was no
matter it really was no matter what he said.
It was possibly from a desire to be consistent
with his principles that the Bishop left so small
a sum for the purpose of this prize that the
Berkeley Gold Medal is not materially one of
much value. As a distinction, however, it is
highly prized. The subject in which candidates
were examined in 1874 was " The Fragments of
the Greek Comic Poets, as edited by Meineke,"
and the prize was won by Oscar Wilde. It will
illustrate to what financial straits the poor man
was put even at a time when his name was in
everybod3^s mouth, that in 1883 after his
successful visit to Paris, and while he was
lecturing all over England, he was obUged to
go to the magistrate at Marlborough PoUce
Court to make a statutory declaration con-
cerning the loss of a pawn-ticket which was the
voucher for Bishop Berkeley's gold medal.

In the books of Trinity College there is no
record of the marks earned by the various
competitors who entered for the Berkeley Prize
in 1874. The mere fact that this was won by
Oscar Wilde is registered in the records of the
college. With regard, however, to the scholar-

Z18

The Life of Oscar Wilde

ship which Oscar Wilde had won in the previous
year full particulars of his various markings are
to be fotmd. They are of some interest, as
illustrating the state of his mental capacity in
the different subjects in which the candidates
were examined.

Oscar Wilde's marks in the various subjects
were the following. In each case lo was the
maximum number of marks obtainable.

Viva Voce Thucydides — 8.

Viva Voce Tacitus — 7^.

Greek Prose Composition — ^5. (The examiner in this
subject was Mr Stack, " a notoriously hard marker." The
best marks given were 6}, which were obtained by Joseph
King, who, however, only got the last place but one
among the selected candidates. He was ninth, while Oscar
Wilde was sixth.)

Greek Translation — 7. (This was the best mark given.)

Greek Tragedians (Questions on) — 7.

Latin Comedians (Questions on)— 7.

Latin Prose Translation on Paper — 6.

Latin Prose Composition — 3^.

Demosthenes — 5.

Ancient History — 7.

Greek Verse (Passages on Paper) — 5.

Greek Verse Composition. — i. (Here Mr Wm. Roberts
was the examiner. He was a " character as a 'Varsity
Don," a very hard examiner. In this subject most of the
candidates scored no better than Oscar Wilde, some got
no marks at all, a plump duck's egg figures against their
names in the Trinity record. One or two got two marks.
Messrs Montgomery and L. C. Purser, who were first and
second in the final classification, each got five marks.)

119

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Greek Viva Voce (Mr Tyrell, examiner) — 6.
Latin Viva Voce (Mr T5n:ell, examiner) — 5 J.
Translation from Latin Poets — j{.

English Composition — 6, (This was the highest number
of marks scored in this subject by any of the candidates.)
Latin and Greek Grammar — ^4.

In the final result Oscar Wilde got the sixth
place out of ten selected candidates. Joseph
King, who was considered the cleverest man
in the college was placed ninth. The following
is the complete Ust of selected candidates in
their order of merit.

Malcolm Montgomery.
Louis Claudb Purser.
Richard Hbnnessy.
Thomas Corr.
GoDDARD Henry Orpen.
Oscar Wilde.
William Ridgeway.
George Thomas Vanston.
Joseph King.
Arthur M'Hugh.

An examination of the marks obtained by Oscar
Wilde sets forth that while still weak in the
rudiments he had made great progress in English
composition. He was to make still greater pro-
gress in the event.

The Trinity College Scholarships, Uke the
Gold Medal, lack in that materialism which the
Bishop denied. They carry with them no great

Z20

The Life df Oscar Wilde

emolmnent. A T.C.D. scholar obtains rooms in
coU^e at half the usual fees charged to students.
He has no fees to pay for tuition, and he gets
his dinners for nothing. But there is no income
attached to the position. " Oscar Wilde never
held his scholarship at Trinity College/' one
learns, " as he preferred to go to Oxford, where
better things are to be won."

In the following year, accordingly, he went to
Oxford, won a demyship at Magdalen College,
of the annual value of £95, tenable for five years,
and matriculated at Magdalen on 17th October.
He writes in " De Profundis " of his entrance
into the English University, as the great turning-
point of his Ufe.

" I want to get to the point,'* he writei, " when
I shall be able to say quite simply, and without
affectation, that the two great turning-points in
my Ufe were when my father sent me to Oxford,
and when society sent me to prison."

It is possible that when he wrote those lines
he was thinking that if he had never been sent
to Oxford, the extraordinary latent madness
which had brought him to the terrible place
where he sat, might never have been roused into
fatal activity. For there is no use den3dng it :
Oxford, which is the finest school in the world
for the highest culture, is also the worst training-

xai

The Life of Oscar Wilde

ground for the lowest forms of debauchery. It
^ all depends on the character of the student^ his
early home-trammg, his natural pro})ensities,
his ph5rsical state, his religious belief. Oxford
produces side by side the saint, the sage, and
the depraved libertine. She sends men to
Parnassus or to the public-house, to J^tium or
the lenocinium. The Dons ignore the horrors
which are going on under their very eyes. They
are wrapped up in the petty concerns of the
University hierarchy ; they are of men the most
unpractical and least worldly; while possibly
their deep classical studies have so famiUarised
them with certain pathological manifestations
that they really fail to understand the horror
of much that is the common jest of the under-
graduates. Oxford has rendered incalculable
services to the Empire, but she has also fostered
and sent forth great numbers of men who have
Contributed to poison EngUsh society. It is
very possible that if Sir Wilham Wilde had not
sent his second son to Oxford, but had left him in
Ireland, where certain forms of perversion are
totally unknown, and where vice generally is
regarded with a universal horror which contrasts
most strongly with the mischievous tolerances
that EngUsh society manifests towards it, Oscar
would now be Hving in Dublin, one of the Ughts

122

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of Trinity College, one of the glories of Ireland,
a scholar and a gentleman of universal reputa-
tion. Let any Oxford man who remembers
his imdergraduates days, who remembers the
things that used to be jested about there, and
the common talk at the wines about this man or
that, ask himself when he has condemned Oscar
Wilde whether ahna mater may not have been
to blame, in part if not in toto, for the tremendous
and terrible metamorphosis that was worked in
Oscar Wilde's character, admitting that the
young man, who left Trinity College with a
spotless reputation, really did develop in so
short a time into the dangerous maniac such as
he afterwards came to be considered The man
who approaches the study of this extraordinary
degeneration of character (admitting the common
aspect of the Oscar Wilde of later years to be
justified) in a scientific spirit and without bias,
cannot fail to feel the gravest suspicion that
Oscar Wilde was to a very large extent a victim
of the Oxford educational system, of the Oxford
environment. To the same dangers as those to
which he succumbed any impressionable lad is
exposed, who, starting with no strong moral
sense, his native virtue weakened by evil
example at home, is immersed in a year-long
course of study, in which in the finest language

123

The Life of Oscar Wilde

that the world has ever voiced men and women
are glorified who in the present day would be
considered monsters fit only for the stake^ and
where in almost divine poetry are celebrated
passions and acts which society and the church
now point to as the very abomination of de-
solation. In a pathetic letter which Oscar
Wilde wrote to a friend of his after his release
from prison he said : '' I have still difficulty in
understanding why the frequentation of Sporus
should be considered so much more criminal than
the frequentation of MessaUna." It is^ more-
over^ a well-established pathological fact that the
men in whom certain aberrations develop with
the most hideous fecundity are men of great
scholarship whose moral sense has been warped
by studies in which they have come to identify
their environment with that of the men and
women of antiquity.

In scholarship Oscar Wilde progressed with
surprising rapidity. His career as a student was
a most successful one. He took a First Class
in Moderations in the Honours School (Trinity
Term 1876), and two year later, in Trinity
Term 1878, he took a First Class in the " Honour
Finals.*' Yet he was never a reading man, and
was rarely to be seen at his books.

124

IN.ot.. /.•; FJl'of X- Frii.

Tc f'tce 1*0- ;t 125.

CHAPTER VII

Oscar ^^^de at Oxford — John Ruskin— The Extent of his
Inflnence on Oscar Wilde — Ruskin's Sodalism — Oscar
\^^lde as a Social Reformer — His Imniense Influence
Abroad — Osbar as an Undergraduate — His Rooms at
Magdalen —^ His Appearance — He is "Ragged" — His
Physical and Moral Courage — His Leanings to Catholicism
— His Journey in Greece — ^The Effect upon him — Early
Writings if Ftose and Verse — " Ravenna " — ^The Irony
of Fate— 7 Ravenna " Symbolical of his own Career.

During some part of Oscar Wilde's first term at
Oxford — that is to say, during one month in
Michaebnas Term 1874 — John Ruskin, Slade
Professor of Fine Arts, was lecturing twice a
week in the Oxford Museum on the " iEsthetic
and Mathematic schools of Art in Florence/'
This was the second course of lectures deUvered
by Ruskin during that term, and this course was
divided into eight lectures, classified under three
separate titles. The first three lectures (Series
A) dealt with (i) Amolfo, (2) Cimabue, (3)
Giotto. This series described the "iEsthetic
Schools of 1300." The next series of three
lectures (Series B), treated of the " Mathematic
Schools of 1400," and the various lectures ex-
pounded, (4) Brunelleschi, the architect of the

125

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Pitti Palace in Florence, (5) Querela, and (6)
Ghiberti. The " Final EflForts of .Esthetic Art
in Florence" formed the subject of the two
concluding lectures (Series C), and these treated
of (7) Angelico, and (8) BotticeUi.

Oscar Wilde was a constant attendant at these
lectures, and there can be no doubt that they
produced a very strong impression on his mind,
as, indeed, Rusldn's discourses did on every man
who heard them. They must have opened up
a new field of interest to the young Irishman,
have afforded him new subjects on which to talk,
and have suggested to him, by the spectacle of
the great enthusiasm which Mr Ruskin aroused,
the opportunism of a minor apostolate in a creed
so obviously popular and successful. But there
does not appear to be any grounds for sa3ang, as
has so often been said, that Oscar Wilde was
greatly influenced by Mr Ruskin. It was not ""
probable that this would be so seeing that the
whole period of Ruskin's pubUc appearances that
term did not exceed twenty-four dsiys, and that
in that period it is not possible for one man to
influence another to the extent of tinging his
whole psychology. Oscar Wilde was a man of
extraordinary receptivity, but even to him it
would have been impossible to absorb Ruskin's
teachings and example so that these should

126

The Life of Oscar Wilde

have any permanent effect on his character, in
so short a period. At that time he was fresh at
Oxford ; a hundred things presented themselves
every day to divert his attention ; his mentality
was in no way prepared to receive the master's
teachings ; and altogether it seems as absurd to
state that Ruskin influenced the whole of his
character and his Ufe by means of the eight
lectures which Oscar Wilde attended as a fresh-
man during his first term in Oxford^ as it was
incredible that the perusal of a single book
could pervert the mental composition of a man.
These matters have to be looked at from a
scientific point of view ; the plain facts have
to be considered and the evidence that can be
adduced. There is no trace of any Ruskin
influence in Oscar Wilde's after life^ and it would
be a psychological miracle if there had been.

It is true that the young man was brought
into personal contact with the master^ and that
he was one of the " ardent young men " who
gathered round Mr Ruskin in his practical
demonstrations of the Gospel of Labour. In
one of the notices of Oscar Wilde's early life we
find the following reference to this : '' The
influence of Ruskin was so great that Mr Wilde,
though holding games in abomination, and
detesting violent exercise, might have been seen

127

The Life of Oscar Wilde

on grey November mornings breaking stones on
the roadsides — ^not imbribed^ however ; * he
had the honour of filling Mr Ruskin's especial
wheelbarrow/ and it was the great author of
'Modem Painters* himself who taught him
how to trundle it."

Mr E, T. Cook in his very able monograph,
" Some Aspects of Mr Ruskin's Work," which
is one part of his " Studies in Ruskin/' gives
the following account of the " road-digging
experiment," referred to above. " No pro-
fessor, I suppose, has had more power of personal
influence over his pupils, or has used it more
for good, than Mr Ruskin. One of the methods
which he adopted for gathering a circle of ardent
young men around him, and impregnating them
with his spirit, was the subject of much sarcastic
comment. This was the famous road-digging
experiment. No one was more ative to the
amusing side of the affair than Mr Ruskin
himself. The road which his pupils made is,
he has been heard to admit, about the worst in
the three kingdoms, and for any level places
in it he gives the credit to his gardener, whom
he incontinently summoned from Brantwood.
Neverthdess the experiment, even from the
point of view of road-making, was by no means
barren. An inch of practice is worth a yard of

128

The Life of Oscar Wilde

preaching ; and Mr Raskin's road-digging at
Hincksey gave a powerful stimulus to the Gospel
of Labour^ of the same kind as the later and
independent stimulus of Count Tolstoi ; of
whom Mr Ruskin has spoken gratefully in recent
years as his successor. But the fact is that
most of the Oxford road-diggers were attracted
to the work, not for its own sake, but for the
reward of it — ^the reward of the subsequent
breakfast-party and informal talks in Mr Ruskin's
rooms at Corpus. It was in Mr Ruskin's Oxford
Lectures and these supplementary enforcements
of their teaching that the seeds were sown or
watered, of that practical interest in social
questions which is the * Oxford movement of
to-day.' "

It would be an insult to the lofty intellect of
Oscar Wilde, inmiature as he then was, receptive
as he always was, to suppose that the socialism
of Mr Ruskin, that Tolstoism d'avant la lettre,
which enangers and disgusts every true reformer,
had any influence upon him whatever, and that
the author of that magnificent plaidoyer, " The
Soul of Man Under SociaUsm," did not fully
realise the grotesqueness of these bourgeois
buffooneries. One has the highest respect for
Mr Ruskin ; but what opinion is Ukely to be held
by anyone who knows the real condition of the ^ ]^^ T^^
1 139 0 »

ff-wL.r c

The Life of Oscar WUde

poor in the three kingdoms of England^ Scot-
land, and Ireland who is invited to admire the
Slade Professor of Fine Art haranguing in the
following terms an audience of young bourgeois
and aristocrats, greasy and replete with
unctuous breakfast, dad in warm clothing,
opulent and perky : — ** I tell you that neither
sound art, poUcy, nor religion can exist in Eng-
land until, neglecting, if it must be, your own
pleasure-gardens and pleasure-chambers, you
resolve that the streets which are the habitation
of the poor, and the fields which are the play-
grounds of their children, shall be again restored
to the rule of the spirits whosoever they are in
earth and heaven, that ordain and reward, with
constant and conscious felicity, all that is
decent and orderly, beautiful and pure." This
is the kind of talk that gets Social Reformers
into Whig Cabinets and raises statues to them
by subscription of the middle classes. It does
not deceive the people for a single moment,
and it does not for a single moment deceive
those who instinctively or by long observation
understand the wants of the people and know
what wrongs of theirs ought to be redressed. It
would not deceive Oscar Wilde, who intuitively
rather than by observation, for he recoiled from
any sights that might distress his aesthetic

130

The Life of Oscar Wilde

taste^ so fully understood the problem of the
poor. It is among some of his friends an
abiding regret that he was not spared a few
years longer^ so that in the depth of his despair
he might have seen the wonderful triumph that
Germany has prepared for him, might have
watched the crowds flocking to the theatre to
see ** Salom^ " played, might have hstened to
the frantic enthusiasm which this play never
fails to evoke, might a little later on have
realised that it had been given to him by this
play to stimulate to the highest expression of
his wonderful art the composer Richard Strauss,
whom the cognoscenti hail as the greatest maestro
who ever lived. Amongst other of his friends
the regret will be greater that it never came to
his knowledge that all over Europe amongst the
poor, oppressed and outcast, his name is rever*
enced as that of an apostle of the liberties of
man. No writing on the social question,
perhaps, has produced a profounder impression
than his on the continent, where '' The Soul of
Man'' has been translated into every tongue.
Amongst the very poorest and most forlorn, and
most desperate of the helots of Europe, the Jews
of Russia and Poland, Oscar Wilde, known to
them only as the author of this essay, is re-
garded in the light of a prophet, a benefactor, a

X31

The Life of Oscar WUde

saint. In many of the awful kennels in Warsaw
and Lublin^ in Kieff and Libau his portrait is
pinned to the wall. Such is the interest taken
in him that recently, his friend, the author of
''Oscar Wilde/' ^^The Story of an Unhappy
Friendship/' received from a Jewish gentleman
living in the East End of London a request that
he should furnish his correspondent with bio-
graphical details about Oscar Wilde, to be pre-
fixed in form of a preface to a new edition of the
Yiddish translation of " The Soul of Man," such
particulars having been eagerly asked for from
the Jewish proletariat all over Poland and Russia.

Mr Ruskin left for Venice at the end of
Michaelmas Term 1874, and did not return to
Oxford till a year later, when he deUvered a
series of twelve lectures on " The Discourses of
Sir Joshua Reynolds,'* during the month of
November. During 1876 he did not lecture at
all, and it was not till Michaelmas 1877 that
he was seen again as Slade Professor of Fine Art.
Under the circumstances it is nonsense to assert
that his influence on Oscar Wilde extended any
further than what is indicated in Walter
Hamilton's most interesting book, "The
iEsthetic Movement in England," in the chapter
which treats of Oscar Wilde.

" But unfortunately," he writes, " Mr Ruskin
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The Life of Oscar Wilde

left for Venice at the end of Mr Wilde's first term ;
not, however, before he had inoculated a number
of the yoimg collegians with artistic tastes.
Mr Wilde occupied some fine old wainscoted
rooms over the river in that college which is
thought by many to be the most beautiful in
Oxford. These rooms he had decorated with
painted ceihngs and handsome dados, and they
were filled with treasures of art picked up at
home and abroad ; and here he held social meet-
ings, which were attended by numbers of the
men who were interested in art, or music, or
poetry, and who for the most part practised
some one of these in addition to the ordinary
collegiate studies/'

It was at this time, therefore, that a rdle was
forced upon the young man, which he had no
natural quaUfications to play ; it was here that
the curtain rose on that tragi-comedy in which
his fine intellect was to lend itself to grotesque
performances until, just before a period was
put to his existence, he really foimd himself.
It was from these reunions in Magdalen that
dated that virtuosity in music and painting
and the decorative arts which he was forced
to assiune by the hazards of Ufe, his own
necessities and the folly of his contemporaries.
He knew little about music, and little about

133

The Life of Oscar Wilde

painting^ and in the matter of furniture,
tapestries, wall-papers and architecture he was
4^9 more of a connoisseur than is any man who
can assimilate the current modes and the
chatter of the arbiters. During a long period of
his Ufe this pose which had been forced upon
him must have galled his native rectitude.
Face to face with himself he must have felt
that it was an unworthy part for a man of his
great intellect and wonderful gifts to play.
Perhaps it was from this feeling that in some

V respects he was playing a double-faced rdle that
proceeded that curious self-accusing manner,
which all his intimates noticed in him, and
which filled them with astonishment. It is a

^ fact that music bored him ; it is a fact that he
had no knowledge of any instrument ; it is
probable that he could with difficulty distinguish
one tune from another. Yet he was forced to
posture as a connoisseur , and to speak and write
about musicians and music with the air of one
who was profoundly versed in all the technique
of the art. A friend of his relates that the rare
occasion on which he saw Oscar ^^lde angry
with him was once when he had frequently
repeated in his presence a phrase from one of
Oscar's essays, a phrase which had struck him
by its effectiveness so that he had the pleasure

134

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in repeating it that actors have in mouthing a
"g^" which has caught the popular ear.
This phrase was : " a splendid scarlet thing by
Dvorak." At the third repetition of these
words, Oscar Wilde flew into a veritable passion
and rebuked the friend for wishing to ridicule
him. It has always been held by the man who
relates this story that Oscar's anger was caused
by the suspicion that his friend knew that his
claim to write about Dvorak or any other com-
poser was a mere pretence, and that He cleverly
veiled his ignorance by the use of sonorous and
effective phrases.

Mr Hamilton quotes the following passage
as given by " one who was acquainted with Mr
Wilde at Oxford " as descriptive of his life there :

" He soon began to show his taste for art and
china, and before he had been at Oxford very
long, his rooms were quite the show ones of the
college and of the imiversity too. He was
fortunate enough to obtain the best situated
rooms in the college, on what is called the
kitchen staircase, having a lovely view over the
river Cherwell and the beautiful Magdalen
walks, and Magdalen bridge. His rooms were
three in number, and the walls were entirely
panelled. The two sitting-rooms were connected
by an arch, where folding doors had at one

135

The Life of Oscar Wilde

time stood. His blue china was supposed by
connoisseurs to be very valuable and fine, and
there was plenty of it. The panelled walls were
thickly hung with old engravings — chiefly en-
gravings of the fair sex artistically clad as nature
clad them. He was hospitable, and on Simday
nights after " Conmion Room " his rooms were
generally the scene of conviviality, where under-
graduates of all descriptions and tastes were to be
met, drinking punch, or a *' B. and S.," with their
cigars. It was at one of these entertainments
that he made his well-known remark, " Oh,
would that I could live up to my blue china ! "
His chief amusement was riding, though he never
used to hunt. He was generally to be met on
the cricket-field, but never played himself; and
he was a regular attendant at his college barge
to see the May eight-oar races, but he never used
to trust his massive form to a boat himself."

At this time he had not yet adopted those
eccentricities of costume which a few years later
attracted universal attention to his person. The
portraits which exist of him as an undergraduate
of Oxford represent him comfortably and soberly
attired in a tweed suit, a flannel shirt, with a tie
unassumingly gathered into a knot imder his
txuTi-down collar. In the winter he used to
wear an ordinary grey ulster. His hair which

136

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was brushed back from his forehead was not too
long. The best known photograph of Oscar
Wildcat this period — that is tosay in 1878 — ^is the
" amateurish and therefore faithful *' picture of
him taken by a man who was then a well-known
character in Oxford, whose name was Guggen-
heim. This man used to be known as " Gug "
by the undergraduates. He was a kind of Hans
Breitmann^a typicalstage-German, with tasselled
smoking-cap, carpet sUppers, and a long-stenuned
china pipe. His studio was in the " High," and
he had a reputation for taking " College groups '*
in an effective manner.

Oscar Wilde attempted while an under-
graduate to render himself proficient in painting,
but nothing that he ever painted has survived.
There is a story that for a period during vacation
he studied art in Paris ; and it is remembered at
Oxford that being once asked by a Magdalen
celebrity, as a joke, what he would do if his means
suddenly failed him and if he were to be thrown
on his own resources, he answered : ** I should
live in a garret and paint beautiftd pictures."
However, no one at Oxford, who knew him in
those days, can remember seeing him paint, and
a suspicion existed that he cotdd not paint at
all, and that his remark was only the outcome
of the deception which he had resolved to prac-

137

The Life of Oscar Wilde

tise. It is qmte probable, though^ that he may
have attempted painting^ and being dissatisfied
with his progress preferred to " talk pictures "
instead of painting them. // passa sa vie d se
purler, and not with reference to pictures alone.
Not in his dress, therefore, at that time, but in
his conversation and manners rather did he
assume that " dangerous and deUghtful dis-
tinction of being different from others," of which
he writes in his remarkable essay on Thomas
Griffiths Wainewright ("Pen, Pencil, and Poison,"
fn " Intentions"), Yet, such as it was, his affecta-
tion irritated the undergraduates, and on one oc-
casion, at least, they manifested their displeasure
with the brutality which these over-fed yoimg
^npn^ sometimes display. Oscar was once
"ragged" at Oxford. Some eight healthy
yoimg PhiUstines waylaid the "blue china
cove " while out walking, fell upon him, bound
him with cords and dragged him up a hill,
trailing him along the ground. He was much
hurt and bruised, but he did not resist, for that
was useless ; nor did he protest with a single
word. When at last they released him at the
top of the hill he simply flicked the dust off his
coat with the air of a Regency beau flipping the
grains from his tabatiSre off his lace jabot, and
looking at the prospect said : " Yes ; the view

138

The Life of Oscar WHde

from this hill is really very charming/' Courage •,
was not wanting to him, either physical or moral . )
Indeed very few men have displayed either ^
quality in a more remarkable degree. During
the period that he was out on bail between his
first and second trials his moral courage sur*
prised and impressed all who beheld him. He
refused to avoid the impending danger by flight ;
with heroism he faced the awful prospect that
lay before him. With regard to physical courage
it is on record that while a young man in London
he assisted a man, a friend, to escape from the
police, and in the furtherance of this object ex-
erted great physical strength, holding a door
against a number of constables, while the fugitive
was clambering out of the window to safety and
freedom. In Paris he once expressed his desire
to learn the use of the rapier so that he might be
able to impose silence at the point of the sword
on the slanderers who were attacking his re-
putation. The fact is that Oscar Wilde was
really a man of action. In this respect he
resembles many great Irishmen who have found
for their energies no other outlet than that of
writing. This aspect of Oscar's character is
held by certain of his friends who had the op-
portunity of studjdng his nature at first hand.
In other times and under other circumstances

139

The Life of Oscar WUde

he might have been one of the greatest men of
action of the world. Possibly the fact that his
smrotmdings did not permit him to give play
to this desire for action^ but pinned him down
to the writing-table, generated not only that
indolence and indifference which characterised
him, but fostered also that pessimism which
in the end killed him. " Cette tristesse et ce
comique d'etre un honune," of which Octave
Mirbeau speaks, and which make for despair, are
felt by none so keenly as by men who, burning
to do, are by circimastance condemned to in-
activity. The men who banished Napoleon to
St Helena could have found in the torture-house
of the kings no infliction more cruel.

During his stay in Oxford Oscar Wilde contri-
buted various poems and prose writings to maga-
zines pubUshed in DubUn, notably to the T.C.D.
pubHcation, Kottabos, and The Irish Monthly.

His first contribution to Kottabos appeared
in Vol. ii. (1877) where it may be found on page
268. It is a poem headed :

B/ ah/i0ymon epqtos angos

(The Rose of Love and with a Rose's Thorns)

and begins :

" My limbs are wasted with a flame. . . ."
140

The Life of Oscar Wilde

This poem appears under another title in his
first volume of collected poems. On page 298
of the same volume of KoUabos is to be found
a poem, adapted from the Greek, entitled
" Threnodia " (Eur. Hec. 444-483), and described
as a " song sung by captive women of Troy on
the sea-beach at Aulis, while the Achaeans were
then storm-bound thro' the wrath of dishonoured
Achilles, and waiting for a fair wind to bring
them home." The first strophe is as follows : —

" O Fair Wind blowing from the sea !

Who through the dark and mist dost guide
The ships that on the billows ride,
Unto what land, ah, misery !
Shall I be borne, across what stormy wave
Or to whose house a purchased slave ! "

This Threnody was very judiciously omitted
from his volume of poems. In the same volume
we find on page 320, " A fragment from the
Agamemnon of ^schylus " ; and on page 331,
a poem beginning, " Two crowned Kings." All
these poems are signed with his full initials,
"O. F. O. F. W. W./' which shows that he had
not yet come to regard with disfavour those
patronymics which proclaimed his Irish descent
and aggressively asserted his nationality. The
same signature is found to a poem pubUshed on
page 56 of the third volume of Kottabos (1881),

141

The Life of Oscar Wilde

entitled "Wasted Days'' ("From a Picture
Painted by Miss V. T/'). This poem is signi-
ficant^ because we find here the first indications
that he was assuming a mode of writing about
physical quaUties which later on was to be
brought up in evidence against him. Almost the
very words are here employed which were re-
peated in a letter^ the writing of which^ after it
had been made public^ may nearly be said to
have precipitated his ruin. This poem begins :

" A fair slim boy not made for this world's pain,
Pale cheeks whereon no kiss has left its stain.
Red miderlip drawn in for fear of Love " —

and so on.
^ It is on page 476 of the fifth volume of The
Irish Monthly that one of the earliest published
^.4Jjose writings of Oscar Wilde is to be found.
This was written in 1877 in Rome. It describes
the Tomb of Keats, that Keats who was after-
wards to inspire the writer with one of the
noblest sonnets in the EngHsh language.* The
short article is headed with a quotation from
some guide-book : " As one enters Rome from
the Via Ostiensis by the Porta San Paolo the
first object that meets the eye is a marble pyra-
mid which stands close at hand on the left/'
"This tomb/' writes the young Oxonian,

1 On the sale of the love-letters of Keats.
142

The Life of Oscar Wilde

" had been supposed to be that of Remus. It
really was that of one Caius Cestius, a Roman
gentleman of small note who died about 30 B.C."

" Yet/' he continues, " though we cannot care
much for the dead man who Ues in lonely state
beneath it, and who is only known to the world
through his sepulchre, still this pyramid will be
ever dear to the eyes of all English-speaking
people, because at evening its shadow falls on
the tomb of one who walks with Spenser, and
Shakespeare, and B3nron, and Shelley, and Eliza-
beth Barrett Browning, in the great procession
of the sweet singers of England."

Speaking of the jK>et's Ukeness he says in a
note : —

" I think that the best representation of the
poet would be a coloiured bust, like that of the
young Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence, which
is a lovely and Ufelike work of art."

He concludes : —

" As I stood beside the mean grave of this
divine boy I thought of him as of a Priest of
Beauty slain before his time ; and the vision of
Guide's San Sebastian came before my eyes as
I saw him at Genoa, a lovely brown boy, with
crisp, clustering hair and red Ups, bound by his
evil enemies to a tree and, though pierced with
arrows, raising his eyes with divine, impassioned

143

The Life of Oscar Wilde

gaze towards the Eternal Beauty of the opening
heavens. And thus my thoughts shaped them-
selves to rhyme."

Here follows the poem on the death of
Keats, which here is entitled " Heu Miserande
Puer."

This description of Oscar Wilde's feeUngs by
the grave of Keats is of special interest when it
is remembered that after his release from prison
he assmned the name of Sebastian. No doubt
Guido's picture came before his eyes in his cell in
Reading Gaol, and he felt of himself that though
pierced with arrows his eyes were still fixed on
the heavens, which during his confinement, as
is very clearly shown in " De Profundis,'* had,
indeed, opened before his gaze, reveaUng to
him beauties of which he had never dreamed
before.

To The Irish Monthly he contributed various
poems. In vol. iv. (1876), on page 594, we find
a poem headed " The True Knowledge," be-
ginning :

*' Thou knowest all — I seek in vain
What lands to till or sow."

In vol. V. of the same pubUcation are various
pieces which afterwards appeared in the col-
lected poems. We find on page 415 the poem

144

The Life of Oscar Wilde

which in his volume is entitled " Sonnet on Ap-
proaching Italy/' and which begins :

•• I reached the Alps ; the soul within me burned."

This sonnet is here entitled " Salve Satumia
Tellus/'

On page 755 we find the poem '* Vita Nuova,"
as in his volume it is called^ beginning :

•• I stood by the unvintageable sea."

In The Irish Monthly this poem is entitled

Oorror Arpoi«T09.

Amongst other contributions to this volume
of The IrishMonthly is his poem " Lotus Leaves,"
beginning :

*' There is no peace beneath the noon."

It is stated that it was " impelled by Ruskin's
lectures " that " Mr Wilde visited Italy.*' This
is of doubtful exactness. If Mr Ruskin's dis-
courses had inspired him with the desire to study
the painters about whom the Slade Professor
lectured, Oscar Wilde would have fotmd the
finest specimens of their art much nearer home.
He very probably went to Italy for the same
reason that takes many young Oxonians abroad,
whose means are not stinted, and who are fond
of travelling. There is amongst the writers of
biographical notices often a desire to do what a
K 145

The Life of Oscar Wilde

French popular idiom describes as "chercher
midi a quatorze heiires/' to attribute to all kinds
of influences the most conmionplace acts of the
people of whom they treat* Cook & Sons and
the other tourists' agencies take many more
people to Italy than ever Ruskin's lectures will
send there. The greatest of men have often the
simplest motives for their ordinary acts.

In the same notice we read^ what is much
more to the point, that " In Florence he became
aware of the spiritual element in art, and tiuned
wistfully towards that reUgion which had in-
spired the great ItaUan painters. During this
mood he produced some fine poems, notably
that entitled * Rome Un visited,' which won high
praise from Cardinal Newman ; but the last
wave of the ebbing tide of the Tractarian Move-
ment, though it Ufted him off his feet, did not
carry him away." It is quite true that at this
time of his Ufe he had some desire to join the
Church of Rome. If he did not do so it was
because his faith was never ardent. In later
years it abandoned him altogether. He was a
tolerant Agnostic. In " De Profundis" he
writes : —

** Rehgion does not help me. The faith that
otners give to what is unseen I give to what one
can touch and look at. My gods dwell in

146

The Life of Oscar Wilde

temples made with hands. . . . When I think
about reUgion at all I feel as if I would Uke to
found an order for those who cannot beUeve :
the Confraternity of the Faithless one might
caU it."

Another consideration which may have re-
strained him was that these reversions to Rome
were much too conmion amongst Oxford imder-
graduates, and that the suspicion lurked in the
minds of worldly men that in many cases they
were simply caused by a desire for personal
advertisement, a wish to do something different
from others, to ipater les contemporains : various
motives which to a man of Oscar Wilde's good
taste would appear eminently reprehensible.

Towards the very end of his life he often ex-
pressed the wish that he had sought refuge in
the arms of the church which the spirit of Calvin
does not infect. He is reported to have said
more than once that if he had become a Roman
Catholic when he was a young man he would
never have fallen. He would certainly have
suffered less at the hands of his new co-reUgion-
aries. Indeed, it is difficult to imderstand why
those who inspire themselves from the teachings
of Calvin — that is to say the very large majority
of Englishmen and women — and who should
therefore accept his doctrine of the predestina-

147

The Life of Oscar Wilde

tion of man to sin, of the futility of striving
against its promptings, should with greater
ferocity than any other sect p-oclaim the entire
responsibiUty of the man who has sinned, and
exact from him the uttermost suffering that
mortal penance can inflict.

" Nous tenons," writes Calvin, " que le p6ch6
originel est une corruption r6pandue par nos sens
et affections en sorte que la droite inteUigence
et raison est pervertie en nous, et sommes comma
pauvres aveugles en t^n^bres, et la volont6 est
sujette k toutes mauvaises cupidit6s, pleine de
r6beUion et adonn^e au mal ; bref, que nous
sommes pauvres captifs detenus sous la tyrannic
du p^ch6 : non pas qu'en malfaisant nous ne
soyons pouss6s par notre volont6 propre, telle-
ment que nous ne saurions rejeter ailleurs la
faute de tons nos vices, mais pour ce qu'^tant
issus de la race maudite d'Adam, nous n'avons pas
une seule goutte de vertu k bien faire et toutes
nos facult6s sont vicieuses."

It was the last act of friendship of a friend
whose devotion to poor Wilde is the one beautiful
thing in the terrible spectacle that humanity
afforded in the final tragedy of that man's life,
that on his deathbed Oscar Wilde was baptised
into a kindUer creed than the one expounded
above. Before the breath had left his body

148

The Life of Oscar WUde

pardon had entered into the death chamber ; and
to his friends remains the supreme consolation
that shrived and sung he was carried to his
grave. What would have been his obsequies
if this friend had not been by his side at the
last?

In 1822. an event took place in connection
with^which it may truly be said that " a new
influence entered his life/' This was his journey
^^ipece with the party which accompanied
John Pentland Mahafiy. Of this journey it has
been said that it contributed to make a '' healthy
Pagan " of the man who was hesitating whether
to join the Church of Rome. Wilde himself de-
clared that the lesson he learned during his
travels in Hellas was that it was very right for
the Greek gods to be in the Vatican. " Helen,''
he declared, " took precedence of the Mater
Dolorosa ; the worship of sorrow gave place
again to the worship of 'beauty." It is very
much to be doubted whether for these fine
phrases there was any foundation whatever in
fact; whether the relative claims of Paganism
and of CathoUc Christianity ever troubled the
young traveller's head at all. The influence to
which reference is made above was much simpler
and much more important. It was the result
that might have been expected when an impres-

149

The Life of Oscar Wilde

sionable lad, deeply read in classical literature, re-
ceived visual evidence of the actual existence of
the beautiful things of which he had read. For
/ the first time the true call of the Parthenon
I would reveal itself to his ears. Things which had
! been in his mind but words, words, words, be-
came tangible and living reaUties. It was then,
i no doubt, that for the first time his true enthusi-
asm for Beauty was aroused. It could hardly
1>e otherwise seeing in whose company he was
privil^ed to travel, and who the man was who
was at his side to expound to him the marvels
that Greece unfolds at every step. The full
account of this journey in Greece is given in
Professor Mahaffy's wonderful book, " Rambles
in Greece," which was one of the favourite books
of Monsieur Ernest Renan. Those who are in-
terested in Oscar Wilde should not fail to read
this book carefully, for though it bears no re-
ference to his name, every page of it is significant
to the man who tries to form a just appreciation
of his extraordinary character. It allows one to
assert without fear of contradiction that after
his return from Greece, his apostolate in the
cause of Beauty was no longer dictated by a
sense of opportunism. Many writers allude to
the wonderful beauty of ancient times, but for
the most part their writings have the stamp of

150

The Life of Oscar Wilde

artifiaality. When Oscar speaks of the beauty,
for instance, of a Tanagra statuette he knov^
what he is talking about. In many minds the
suspicion lurks that in everything on which he
wrote and spoke he was apt to use words which
had a fine sound and which conveyed an artistic
suggestion so as to create an impression of his
knowledge. It has been thought that the
catalogues of Museums, the price-lists of jewellers
and other artificers lay at his hand when he was
writing, so as to enable him to heap up dazzling
piles of coruscating words, which to him were
words and nothing else. Zola practised this
deception, and so did Victor Hugo, but never
Oscar Wilde in his references to classical anti-
quity. Take the example quoted above. He
frequently refers in his writings, as he frequently
referred in his talk, to Tanagra statuettes. Those
who ever proclaimed the man an impostor have
been heard say that of Tanagra statuettes he
knew no more than any man who has access to
dictionary or encyclopaedia. Now, during the
many days that he spent in Athens with Pro-
fessor Mahaffy and his friends, the Museums at
Athens were sedulously visited, and particular
attention seems to have been paid to these
statuettes, which in 1877 had only recently been
unearthed in Tanagra in Boeotia. With what

The Life of Oscar Wilde

attention " these little figures of terra cotta^
often delicately modelled and richly coloured
both in dress and limbs*' were then studied
appears very clearly from Mahaify's book. In
Chapter III. of the " Rambles in Greece," under
the heading, " Athens — The Museums," we find
several pages devoted to a learned and inter-
esting description of these figurines. There can
be no doubt that on his return from Greece there
was no man in England better entitled and better
quaUfied to talk and write about Tanagra
statuettes than Oscar Wilde. And the same
proof could be given of the genuine knowledge
which he possessed of all the other beauties of
antique times. When, during the visit to Paris
in 1883, he was heard to say that he had passed
hours in the Louvre in admiration before the
Venus of Milos, people shrugged their shoulders
and charged him with posturing affectation.
Anyone who reads Mahaffy's book, and thus
gathers under what guidance Oscar's eyes were
opened to the admiration of Greek statuary, by
what teaching his critical sense of this form of
Art was created and fostered, will understand
that his sincerity could in no way be called into
account any more than his profound knowledge
of the subject. The man was steeped in the
glories that were Greece. Those wonderful

152

1
1

The Life of Oscar Wilde

passages in '' De Profundis " in which he writes
with such facility and eloquence of the classic
days were inspired by no readings from a prison
Lempri^re. They came to him as naturally as
came to him those other passages which refer
to the horrors, commonplaces of the life which he
was leading.

** For the Greek gods, in spite of the white
and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really
^rhat they appeared to be/' Such are the
opening words of a passage of great beauty
vrhich it can be maintained was written as
simply and with no more straining for effect
than, for instance, the passage beginning :

*' I am completely penniless and absolutely homeless."

It is not possible here, although it would be
of paramount scientific interest, to inquire too
closely into the question whether with this
awakening of enthusiasm for the beauties of
antique Greece the latent tendency towards
perversion was not also developed. If danger
there be in a classical education to lads who
have certain hereditary instincts and abnor-
malities of temperament, certainly no more
powerful means for breaking down such re-
sistance as reUgious education, training, and
example might oppose could have been found

X53

The Life of Oscar Wilde

than this journey in Greece. That remarkable
writer, Henri de R6gnier, in his study of Oscar
Wilde, which appears in his volume, " Figures
et Caract6res," directly attributes his downfall
to the fact that he had so steeped himself in the
Ufe of gone-by days that he did not realise the
world in which he was actually living. The re-
sult would be that the laws of modem society
would not restrain his powerful impulses. " Je
n'insisterai pas sur les causes d'une pareille
.aventure," writes Henri de R6gnier. "On les
connatt. M. Wilde croyait vivre en ItaUe au
temps de la Renaissance ou en Gr6ce au temps
de Socrate. On Ta puni d'une erreur chronologi-
que, et durement, 6tant donn6 qu'il vivait k
Londres oix cet anachronisme est, para!t-il^
frequent." There can be little doubt that the
views enunciated above will by a more en-
Ughtened posterity be accepted in palliation of
the things with which his name is so cruelly
associated. That will be when men have at-
tained to some scientific comprehension of mental
pathology. At present even the pathology of
the body is only just emerging from ignorance^
superstition and charlatanism.

The deUghts of the tour in Greece were so
great — ^how great they must have been will
appear to anyone who reads Mahaffy's wonderful

154

The Life of Oscar Wilde

book — that Oscar Wilde failed to return toOxford
by the date when it was required of him to do. ,
The Dons of Magdalen fined him forty-five
pounds for this breach of discipline. The
money was, however, returned to him when in
the following year he so greatly distinguished
himself by taking a First Qass m the '* Honour
Finals," and by winning Hlie Newdigate Prize
for EngUsh Verse. Tbo poemwhich he sent in
for this competition was a poem entitled /
" Ravenna." It is considered by many of Oscar /
Wilde's admirers as a very fine piece of work,
and it certainly shows a tremendous advance on
the work which is to be found in the magazines,
to which reference has been made above. By a
curious coincidence, in which the ancients might
have seen a manifestation of the dread irony of
the gods, a fortuitous circumstance had equipped ^
him admirably for success in this poetical tourney.
A triumph residted ; both he himself and his
friends may have considered the circumstance
a piece of rare good fortime. When we review
his whole career we may ask ourselves if, indeed,
it was for his happiness that this triumph was
won, and that in consequence he turned with
confidence to the pursuit of that career of letters
which when it is pursued side by side with the
quest of pleasure and excitement leads inevitably

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

to physical and mental ruin. The fortuitous
circumstance referred to is described in the
following terms by Mr Hamilton : —

" During a vacation ramble in 1877 he started
for Greece. Visiting Ravenna by chance on the
way he obtained material for a poem on that
ancient dty ; and singularly enough * Ravenna,'
was afterwards given out as the topic for the
Newdigate competition, and on the 26th Jime
1878 the Newdigate prize poem ' Ravenna '
by Oscar Wilde of Magdalen, was recited in the
theatre, Oxford.'* The poem was, as is usual,
pubUshed by Messrs T. Shrimpton & Sons. The
original edition is very rare, and high prices are
obtained for copies. Many forged editions have
been issued which can be distinguished from the
original by the fact that on title and cover pages
the University Arms are generally missing. The
poem has been reprinted in extenso in Mr
Mosher's collected edition of Wilde's poems,
pubUshed in Portland, M€bss?: a very beautiful
volume.

The poem contains some beautiful lines, and
anyone who remembers the extraordinary
musical beauty of Oscar Wilde's voice will
readily understand that, as is recorded in a con-
temporary account of the recital of " Ravenna "
by its author, "it was listened to with rapt

156

J
1

I 5

The Life of Oscar Wilde

attention and frequently applauded" by the
crowded audience. Here are the opening
lines:

" O lone Ravenna ! many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in the days of old :
Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see
Caesar ride forth to royal victory.
Mighty thy name when Rome's lean eagles flew
From Britain's isles to far Euphrates blue ;
And of the peoples thou wast noble queen,
Till in thy streets the Goth and Hun were seen."

So far the listening competitors may have
wondered at their defeat. Immediately after-
wards, however, they would be forced to admit
that a true poet had revealed himself.

" Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea.
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery !
No longer, now upon the swelling tide,
Pine-forest Uke, thy myriad galleys ride !
For where the brass-peaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note ;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria's purple waters used to flow."

How many of those who were present in the
Sheldonian on that June afternoon and ap-
plauded the handsome youth as he recited in the
most melodious of voices his effective lines
realised that they were listening to what was a
very allegory of the startling omtrasts that were
to mark the poet's Ufe. Greatness was to come

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

to him^ and upon greatness^ desolation and
lonely ruin were to follow. The man, though
he knew' it not, was telling the story of his own
sj^endours to come, and of the misery that was
to follow upon them.

158

CHAPTER VIII

Oscar Wilde in Maaqnerade— A Professor of iEsthetica—The
Object Porsaed — ^The /Esthetic Movement — Oscar Wilde's
Siege of London — ^His Success and his Failure— The Testi-
mony of an Eye-Witness — Society's Attitude towards him
—Possible Explanation of this Attitude— Oscar Wilde's
Repartee — ^Whistler in the same Dilemma — Wilde's
Vohime of " Pbems " — the Dress of the Cinderella Muse —
In what the " Pbems " greatly triumphed — " Howell and
James "—The Friendship of Edmund Yates— The Ad-
miration and R^;ard of Sarah Bernhardt — ^The " Poems "
and the Critics— The ''Poems" and a Professional
Humorist — The "Pbems" in America — Oscar Wilde
saib lor the Sutes— A Seod-off in the " World "—What
Oscar may have felt.

On ist May in this year 1878 Oscar Wilde ap-
peared at a fancy-dress ball at Headington Hill
given by Mrs Morrell. He presented himself in
the costume of Prince Rupert^ and his fine and
striking appearance was commented upon in the
social chronicles of the time. For some period
of his life subsequent to this event he was to be
seen figuring in masquerade. Later on Society
forced him to assume another travesti, which in
its essential features was not dissimilar to the
one he had assumed when he went up to London
in the rdle of a " Professor of iEsthetics and Art
critic/' as Foster describes him in his Alumni

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

Oxonienses. The more one studies the lives of
great men the more does the certitude impress
itself upon one that our human destinies are
ruled by a power of which a mocking irony is
the prime characteristic. The ancients dis-
covered it long ago ; the modem world is be-
ginning to perceive it. For some part of his
life Oscar Wilde masqueraded in defiance of
Society^ and then later on Society made him
masquerade in defiance of himself.

An authoritative writer, who, however,
throughout Oscar Wilde's career was his sternest
critic and censor, declared at the time of his
dovmfall that Oscar Wilde had been heard to
explain that the reason why he assumed that
costume which it pleased him to describe as the
" aesthetic costtime " was merely to attract at-
tention to his personality. He adds that Oscar
Wilde had said that for months he had tried
in vain to find a pubUsher for his collected poems,
and that having failed to do so, because he was
an unknown man, he determined to make him-
self known, and had hit upon the device of apH
pearing in public in an extraordinary dress. He
adopted as the " aesthetic costume " a velvet
coat, knee-breeches, a loose shirt with a turn-
down collar, and a floating tie of some unusual
shade, fastened in a LavaUi/re knot, and he not i

i6o

The Life of Oscar Wilde

unfrequently appeared in public carr3dng in his
hand a Uly or a sunflower, which he used to
contemplate with an expression of the greatest
admiration. Let it be added to this that he.
wore his hair long, and was clean-shaven as to his
feice ; and when it is remembered how striking
a form and what memorable features were his
already by Nature it will be understood what
attention his appearance must have attracted.
One might find other and more charitable ex-
planations for this self-travesty ; perhaps with
all the more justification that commerical in-
stinct does not appear to have been very strong
in Oscar Wilde. He was a young man at the
time ; he was by nature and atavism incUned
to Schwaermerei ; he may have thought that
the costume suited him ; he may have wished
to set Society at defiance at the prompting of
that Anarchist spirit which was within him, as
it is within all men who are really great. For
the rest, whatever the man's motives were, that
he gave effect to his plan shows that he possessed
great moral courage. It is by no means every
man who has the strength of mind to make a
laughing-stock of himself in the eyes of London.
The London gamins are pitiless ; and on each of
his walks abroad the young " aesthete " must
have veritably run the gauntlet. It may further
L i6i

The Life of Oscar Wilde

be noted that many men and women of ap- •
proved capacity have shown and do show this
curious love of self-advertisement; ^t has al-
ways been the malady of the great/; in recent
years it has grown into an epideitmc. The ad-
vance of conunerdaUsm may accoimt for it.
Conrnierdalism has made it clear that the only
met hod, by which a man can call attention to
the excellence of his wares is by persistent
puffery. Artists, actors, writers, philosophers
and politicians have equally wares to sell — in
this age every man who is not independent is a
tradesman of sorts — ^and one can hardly blame
them if they adopt the means for selling these
wares which succeed in other branches of trade.
The public, moreover, is gradually becoming so
accustomed to these methods that far from re-
garding with suspicion the man of letters who
by the eccentricity of his costume, the length
of his hair, the frequency or the rarity of per-
sonal mentions and portraits of him which
appear in the papers, is the carrier of his own
advertising boards, the importunate distributor
of personal leaflets, it gives more and more its
exclusive attention to the person who most
loudly shouts his wares. This is the case in
England and America. In the Latin countries
and in Germany where art is still regarded in

162

The Life of Oscar Wilde

much the same light as religion these tricks
would fail of their desired effect. But in Eng-
land we are a commercial nation^ and as Doctor
Johnson never tired of pointing out to Bos^^ell,
we must be dealt with by commercial methods.
There is no call in this biography to give any
extended description of that aesthetic movement
in England with which Oscar Wilde for a short
period of his Ufe, and for motives which are not
quite clear to us, associated himself. Anyone
who is curious on the subject of one of those
crazes which sent the British public once more
into what Carlyle called a " bottomless abyss of
deliriimi and confusion and nameless distrac-
tion" * should read Walter Hamilton's excellent
and most interesting book : " The iEsthetic
Movement in England/' to which already fre-
quent reference has been made, and from which
material yet remains to be drawn. It is the
work of a man who was not uns5anpathetic with
the movement, and who had for the leaders and

^ " Carlyle once observed to my father : Upon the whole,
the British publ?.c, with its contagious enthusiasms, reminds
me of nothing so much as the Gadarene swine. There they
are quietly grubbing and grunting in search of what pignuts
or other aliments may present themselves for their sustenance
and comfort, when suddenly the devil enters into them, up
go their tails into the sky, and away they go, plunging into
bottomless abysses of delkium and confusion and nameless
distraction " (" Random Reminiscences,'* by Charles H. £.
Brookfield).

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

camp-followers of it esteem^ admiration, or
tolerance. And side by side with Mr Hamilton's
book, the volumes of Punch for the years
1880-1883 may be turned over. It is from the
satirist that one learns most of social life ; and
Juvenal and Saint Simon are the best historians.

"The .Esthetes," wrote Mr Hamilton, "are
they who pride themselves upon having found
out what is the really beautiful in nature and
art, their faculties and tastes being educated up
to the point necessary for the full appreciation
of such quaUties ; whilst those who do not see
the true and the beautiful — the outsiders in
fact — are termed Philistines."

Even at the height of the craze there was a
very considerable proportion of the public in
England which did not even know the meaning
of the word aesthetic. It was usual enough to
hear people express the surmise that as anaes-
thetic was something which sent you to sleep^
an aesthetic must be something which. . . . The
movement was generally associated with sun-
flowers, certain pecuUar shades in pottery and
tissues, a languid demeanour, and a certain
angularity of furniture and attitude. The
penalty for this craze is still being paid by an
innocent posterity in the enormities of cheap
and tawdry accessories which are forced upon

164

^:-**^ /^

OSCAR WILDE.

*. y^e^.

" 0, I feel jtLst as happy as a bright Sunflower 1 "

Lays of Chsri^ MinHrtUy.

^thete of iEsthetes 1

What 's in a name?
The poet is Wildb,

But his poetry 's tame.

CARICATURE KKPRODICED 15V TEKMISSION OI THE PROPRIETORS OF "PUNCH.'

To fact i^agt 165.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the ignorant public by the manufacturers under
the sacred name of Art, never so ruthlessly pro-
faned. As usual, certain men who put them-
selves forward as active agents of the movement,
of the reform, attained to popularity and wealth ;
certain tradesmen, commercial or self-styled
artistic, emerged from poverty and obscurity
by supplying the properties of the burlesque
which England was enacting. The sincere men
who had initiated all this enthusiasm remained,
as usual, in the backgroimd, and continue to-day
in the same serene solitude and silence the work
they then began. For his part in popularising
their theorie§;f-one might almost say in burles-
quing themy-Oscar Wilde derived a certain and
wide notoriety, leaped into the pubUc eye, found
a publisher for his poems^ iand, in the event, en-
gagements to lecture in the three kingdoms and
in America. On the other hand, he started his
artistic career amidst the suspicion of his con-
temporaries. This suspicion still cUngs to his
name. The pubUc memory is tenacious. The
public mind does not readily accord to one man
the right to play more than one part in life. It
is diffident of versatility. UniversaUty of genius
it blankly refuses to admit. The funny man can
never get people to take him seriously. Sydney
Smith has described this. The Hanswurst must

165

The Life of Oscar Wilde

be Hanswurst till the end of the chapter. There
can be no doubt that Oscar Wilde's early ec-
centricities created an erroneous impression con-
cerning his capacities which for years militated,
and in certain quarters still militates against the
reputation which his high genius entitled him
to enjoy. Fame is not to be violated with im-
punity ; and when the claims of the Pont d' Arcole
were denied, could the peacock's feather and the
sunflower prevail ? The pose, such as it vras, was
eminently successful. If notoriety were sought
after, it was gained to the fullest extent. Punch
celebrates week in week out the eccentricities of
the school. On the parts played in this circum-
stance by both Du Marnier and Bumand Mr
Hamilton's most interesting book can be con-
sulted.

There can be no doubt that all the time when
Oscar Wilde was thus mununing and masquer-
ading the bitterness at his heart was great.
Knowing what was in him ; feeling the flame
of the genius that burned within ; conscious
of the part that he might have been playing on
the stage of the world, to none more than to
himself can his notoriety, acquired as it was and
kept alive by such means, have appeared despic-
able and a matter for regret. /At the same time
it helped him to some extent to gain that entr/e

i66

The Life of Oscar Wilde

into London society which when he left Oxford
and went to the metropolis was his immediate
object. The lion-himters with which the capital
abounds were not sorry to be able to produce
at their tables and during their receptions the
man about whom England was speaking, and of
whom the comic papers made weekly sp)ort. In
this way he certainly achieved some part of his
purpose, which, otherwise, might altogether have
failed of effect. For in a world where the first
question that is asked about a new-comer is:
" What has he got ? '* and the next is : " Who
is he ? '* the younger son of an Irish professional
man, with the very smallest of incomes was
doomed by the very nature of things to utter
failure of his social ambitions. In addition to
this the reputation of his brother Willy, who
had preceded him to London, was already a
damaging one ; and there is no doubt that Oscar's
subsequent animosity towards his brother was
caused by his remembrance of the extent to
which he had been a stumbling-block in his early
path, when the conquest of social London was
the aim of his endeavours. But for the curiosity
which attached to his name it is certain that
none of the doors through which he desired to
pass would ever have opened before him. As it
was, he had the moderate social success which

167

The Life of Oscar W^de

London accords en passant to those who can
divert its stagnant ennui. But he was never
popular in society ; he was mistmstedand mis-
understood; andin the end he was disliked. ICs
\ superiority was too crushing. The men and
V women who gathered round him wishing to
Haugh had the disagreeable surprise of finding
that the buffoon's bladder was weighted with
lead, and that the point of his wit left an in-
tolerable sting behind it. A letter is in exist-
ence written by a lady who belongs to the
highest English nobility, and who saw him in
those early days in London. She appreciated
his qualities to the full, but she also was forced
to admit that as far as winning the suffrages of
what is known as good society in London he
failed utterly.

" I knew him/' so runs the letter, " first at a
Huxley dinner, just after he left Oxford. I was
then old enough to be his mother, but I thought
I had never met so wonderful and brilliant a
creature. . . . Even you,'* she adds, addressing
the person to whom this letter was written,
" seem hardly to know how the ordinary run of
English society hated him. I was never allowed
to ask him to our house. How unconscious he
must have been of this hatred when he thought
that society would stand by him. . . . Pocm-

i68

The Life of Oscar Wilde

thing, that he should have represented an
aristocrat to the howling crowd is most curious."
One has to remember that England is a com-
mercial country where worth, merit, character,
quality, genius are estimated only by the amoimt
of money which a man earns or possesses. The
only poet who is allowed to show consciousness
of STjperiority is the poet who can show from
royalties earned by his books an income superior
to that enjoyed by the people whom he wishes
to impress with his superiority. Our noveUsts
rank according to the amount of shiUings or
pounds they receive per thousand words. In
England the poor man is not allowed to show
pride. Assumption of superiority which in the
man of genius is inevitable is resented in English
society when that man of genius is not able to
show the actual cash value of his talents. That
the younger son of a Dublin oculist, who was
reported to have a bare two hundred a year,
derived from land in Ireland, should try to
impress London society ; should show superi-
ority and act with arrogance, was such an offence
against the first precepts of English Society and
the Church of England catechism that the hatred
and indignation of his contemporaries can only
be too readily believed. It requires a man more
versed in psychology than is the ordinary man

169

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of the world to understand that a man of genius
is proud because he is conscious of his superiority,
because he cannot help but feel this superiority^ and
feeling it cannot help but show it, guard himself
against this as carefully as he may. When
Andr6 Chenier waiting his turn at the guillotine
struck his head against the uprights of the in-
strument of punishment and infamy and cried
out : " And yet there were great things here ! *'
the mob roared with laughter. The mob always
laughs when the man whom it has degraded yet
claims any kind of pre-eminence. Oscar Wilde
in these early days of the attempted Conquest
of London displayed a pride which impressed
the onlookers as arrogance. He figured as the
tnaitre ; he assiuned the office of arbiter^ and he
was, perhaps, too young and inexperienced to
carry the burthen of the part. He used to re-
late with some gusto certain of the retorts which
he had made during this period. They display
that quaUty which Rabelais describes as outre-
Guidance, which where it does not subjugate ex-
cites inextinguishable enmity. One of these
stories also shows his readiness of repartee.
One day arriving very late at a luncheon party
his hostess mildly remonstrated with him for
the delay, pointing to the clock in support of
her rebuke. ** And what, madam,'' he answered,

170

The Life of Oscar Wilde

'* do you think that that little dock knows of
what the great golden sun is doing ? '* The re-
tort was an able one ; but none the less would
that hostess feel that as an excuse for her burned
enir/es and the inconvenience of her other guests ;
it was hardly the amende honorable which she
was entitled to expect^ and in her heart there
would be a feeUng of grudge against the wit.
This anecdote enables one to institute a com-
parison between the readiness and powers of
repartee of Oscar Wilde and the same quaUties
in that rival of his, Whistler. Whistler has al-
ways been considered as far superior in this
respect to Oscar A^lde, and tourneys of repartee
are quoted in which invariably the younger
man was defeated. Yet on a similar occasion,
Whistler, arriving late for limch and being
chidden therefore, foimd nothing better to do,
or to say, than to fix his eyeglass firmly in his
eye, to stare around the room and to cry, " Ha I
Ha ! Lunch ! Lunch I Lunch I Bunch ! Bunch !
Bunch I '' The hearers laughed and found the
wit divine ; but when the thing had crystallised
it must have appeared to the hostess even a
more pitiful excuse than the one which had been
tendered by Oscar Wilde.

During his early years in London Oscar Wilde
did not live with his mother and Willy. He

171

The Life of Oscar WUde

occupied lodgings in unfashionable districts. i

For some months he lived in a couple of furnished 2

rooms in Salisbury Street, ofE the Strand, in the ^

very Bohemia of letters. It was not till later

that he moved to Charles Street, Grosvenor

Square, which was his address during the last j

period of his bachelor da}^. His income was

a very small one, and the struggle to figure as a

man of the world was constant. By mortgaging 1 '

and selling his property in Ireland, by the help j

of friends and by anonymous literary work, he

was just able to maintain himself. If hopes of

wealth ever came to him they proceeded from .

the fact that a rich friend, a lady, had bestowed .

upon him a large quantity of shares in Keeley's ^^

Perpetual Motion Engine, a fraud in which she

had invested very largely, and in which she had

the greatest confidence. At one time when | ,

Oscar's name was most prominently before • ^

London as the darling of London society his I

entire assets consisted of a sheaf of these worth- ' .

less green papers. *

If his desire in assuming the masquerade of the -

" aesthetic costume " was to influence a publisher
to accept the risk of printing his poems, success
here, at least, awaited him. He found in David
Bogue, who was at that time in business as a
high-class publisher in St Martin's Lane, a

17a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

commercial man ready to produce his book in
the best style. In the AthefUBum for 2nd July
1881 the book was annoimced in the following
terms : —

Now ready. Crown Svo. Price 10s. 6d.
POEMS. By OSCAR WILDE

PRINTED ON DUTCH HANDMADE PAPER AND
HANDSOMELY BOUND IN PARCHMENT

This advertisement to anyone who knows the
difficulties that the yoimg aspiring poet has in
finding a publisher for his works is a plain certi-
ficate of success. The price at which the volume
was offered, the paper on which it was printed,
and the parchment in which it was boimd are all
so many tributes to the skill with which the
young man had impressed his personality on
business London. It is not in this livery — ^this
court dress rather — ^that the Cinderella Muse
goes to the Palace of Fame, unless, indeed, a
fairy godmother has intervened.

The irony of things shows itself once more on
this page of the Athenaufn. As one glances
down the list of David Bogue's announcements
one notices among the other new books which
he was issuing at the same time as Oscar Wilde's
poems the following works : " Music and

173

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Morals/' by Haweis; "Conscious Matter," by
W. Stewart Duncan ; and (here one can almost
perceive the sardonic laughter of the immortals)
" How to Make the Best of Life," by J. Mortimer
Granvile.

This volume of poems consisted mainly of
reprints of verses which Oscar Wilde had con-
tributed to various periodicals, Kottabos, The
Dublin University Magazine, The Irish Monthly,
and certain London periodicals and journals.
After leaving Oxford he had published poems
in different weekly and monthly papers. Ed-
mund Yates, who had a great esteem for him,
and was always his literary and social protector,
had opened to him the pages of Time and the
columns of The World. Much of his most
effective verse had appeared in The World. Of
these poems, which have now been reprinted,
and are open to the judgment, nothing need be
said in criticism in this place beyond the fact
that they appealed very strongly to the public
of the day, and that four editions were readily
sold in a few weeks. Many found great delight
in them. The great and beautiful Ellen Terry,
to whom the yoimg poet dedicated two of the
sonnets in this book, was charmedby his tributes ;
and what better success could a poet desire than
having hymned Ellen Terry to win a smile of

174

The Life of Oscar Wilde

approval from her lips? Of the two sonnets,
" To Portia," and " To Queen Henrietta Maria,"
which appeared in this book, the one which
gave most pleasure to the wonderful and great-
hearted artist to whom they were addressed was
the latter. This is it : —

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA

In the lone tent, waiting for victory,

She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,
like some wan lily overdrenched with rain,

The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined day,

War's ruin and the wreck of chivalry

To her proud soul no common fear can bring.
Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord, the King,

Her soul a-fiame with passionate ecstasy.

O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips ! O Face !
Made for the luring and the love of man,
With thee I do' forget the toil and stress.

The loveless road that knows no resting-place.

Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness,
My freedom and my Ufe republican.

This sonnet then achieved what many sonnets
of far greater beauty have failed to achieve. It
appealed to the lady to whom it was inscribed.
It is still remembered as a tribute by one upon
whom tributes have been rained down like the
dew of heaven. For the rest this supreme
artist Uke many other of the greatest women of
the day has always had admiration for the poet
and pity for the man. In the spring of 1905

175

The Life of Oscar Wilde

while England was still wondering whether it
would be right and seemly to pronounce the
name of the man who, although he had written
" De Profundis/' had yet ten years previously
been convicted of conduct for which he had paid
the utmost penalty of the law and the further
penalty of some years of lingering agony and a
miserable death, at that time, then. Miss Terry
had the courage, speaking publicly at Frascati's
at a meeting of the Gallery First Nighters' Club,
to include the name of Oscar Wilde amongst a
list of men whom she used to see at the Lyceum
in the old triumphant days. " In the gallery
and pit at the dear old Lyceum," she said,
" there used to be seen faces of many men who
had won or were about to win distinction
in the world — ^the Bmne-Joneses ; the Justin
McCarthys ; Alfred Gilbert, the great sculptor ;
the late Oscar Wilde ; the poet O'Shaughnessy."
The reference was a courageous one ; the act
was worthy of the woman. Its quotation here
serves another purpose. It enables us to gather
that in the da)^ when Oscar Wilde was writing
his verse he was not a prosperous man. The
young man whose circiun^tances force him to go
to the pit or the gallery of the theatre d la mode
will find difficulty in storming the fortresses of
the British aristocracy. For the "limitless

176

The Life of Oscar Wilde

ambition " of his, of which he used to speak as
a young man, aimed at the very highest social
success. The upper middle-class from which he
sprung filled him with disdain. He used to
speak with contempt of Bayswater as the
stronghold of all that was common and vulgar,
and to be avoided. " A Bayswater view of
things'* — ^he could find nothing more scathing
than that. When in the end he found that the
higher aristocracy, while willing enough to be
amused by him, did not readily yield to his ad-
vances, he came to speak with some contempt
of the old nobility. *' They are nothing but
exaggerated farmers," he used to say. Amongst
the modem souches he had some acquaintances,
and, perhaps, because of their greater affability,
these found no more valorous defender than
Oscar Wilde. It was an imprudent thing for
anyone to venture to joke on the nobility of
the big brewers, for he happened to have some
friends among men who had risen to the ranks
of the aristocracy by the ladder of heaped-up
barrels of beer. It is a fact that social success
always impressed Oscar Wilde. The man who
made money and " got on " in Ufe enjoyed his
regard ; for the failure he had nothing but ab-
horrence. Intimate friends of his have won-
dered to hear him speaking with praise of very
M 177

The Life of Oscar WUde

common fellows who by reason of a little com-
mercial cmming had reached to reputation and
prosperity. In this respect he was essentially
a worldly man^ and, so considered, one wonders
whether the Anarchist doctrines to which he
later 3delded did not result from his vexation
at the small amount of real social success to
which he attained as a young man. In only a
very few good houses in London was he taken
seriously, or invited as an honoured guest.
Literary history affords few more distressing
pictures than these early years of Oscar Wilde,
where we see a man of supreme superiority wast-
ing his time and humiUating himself in running
after the worthless favours of men and wom^i
so entirely his inferiors. In the artistic world,
however, his success was incontestable. He en-
joyed from an early age the friendship and ap-
proval of many men of high distinction. He
was the associate of Whistler ; he sat at the feet
of George Meredith ; he was the companion of
the Pre-RaphaeUtes ; and he proclaimed a
sympathy for Swinburne which the elder poet
did not reciprocate.

In later Ufe he did not often refer to these
dsiys, and when he did so it was to talk of the
arcana of London rather than of its heights.
He had anecdotes to tell of an extraordinary

178

The Life of Oscar Wilde

man named Howell^ who seems to have exploited
the naive Pre-Raphaelites in a pitiless and con-
stant manner, and who had had many amusing
passages of arms with Whistler. For the clever-
ness of this man Oscar Wilde seemed to have
some admiration. He used to quote as a witty
sa3dng of Howell's a retort that he once made
when a group of artists, anxious to get rid of him,
had ofiered to pay his passage out to Australia.
" Who," said Howell, " would go to Australia,
if he had the money to go with ? " He found
that it was a very clever invention on the part
of Howell, being asked one day by Whistler
whether he had ever happened to ride in cab
No. I in London to have answered : " No, but
a few da5^ ago I drove home in cab No. 2."
He seems to have watched with poignant in-
terest the career of that imfortunate artist
Solomons, who, as Fate would have it, survived
Oscar Wilde by some years, and died under
circumstances not more tragic than those which
attended the death of the man who used to
express such pity for his terrible Ufe. That even
at the time when *' Patience " had been nmning
for some months and Bogue was announcing his
poems at the price of half-a-guinea he had not
imposed himself on true London society is made
clear by a note which Edmimd Yates, his friend^

179

The Life of Oscar Wilde

inserted in The World as a preliminary announce-
ment of these poems. It appeared in the number
for 6th July 1881, and runs as follows : " People
who, hearing of Mr Oscar Wilde, ask who he is
and what he has done, will now be able to learn,
as a volume of Mr Wilde's collected poems will
shortly be published/' That Edmund Yates had
a sincere admiration for Oscar Wilde will be all
the more readily understood when it is recorded
that many of Wilde's poems which appeared in
The World had brought to the editor from
different parts of the world letters of high
conmiendation from the readers of that journal.
One incident especially appealed to Yates. It
came to his knowledge that a copy of The World
containing Wilde's poem Ave ImperatHx had
been received by a mess of British ofl&cers in one
of the regiments which followed Lord Roberts
on his march to Kandahar, and that these men
had been struck with the truth and beauty of
the picture which the poet had drawn of the
very spot where they were encamped. Sarah
Bemhardt's admiration for and friendship with
the young poet would also impress that most
Parisian of Londoners, Edmund Yates. Sarah
always had a high regard for Oscar Wilde. She
used to say that she had been charmed with the
courtesy of his manner, and with his kindness of

180

The Life of Oscar Wilde

heart. " Most men who are civil to actresses
and render them services," she used to say,
"have an arrih^e-pens^e. It was not so with
Oscar Wilde. He was a devoted attendant, and
did much to make things pleasant and easy for
me in London, but he never appeared to pay
court." In other words Sarah had discovered
amongst the young men of London one who was
an EngUsh gentleman in every sense of that
much misused term. And this may be put on
record here once and for all. Oscar Wilde was
the beau id^al of an English |;entleman. That
is to say the sane Oscar Wilde. What he may
have been when his epileptiform fits took him
it is for the outcasts to say who saw him on these
rare and mournful occasions.

Oscar Wilde's volume of poems received with
enthusiasm by the pubUc found Uttle favour
with the critics. The book was roundly abused.
The Saturday Review^ which in those days had
still some importance as an arbiter in Uterature,
contemptuously disposed of the book in a few
sentences at the end of an article on " Recent
Poetry." This review appears in the number
for 23rd July 1881. It begins: "Mr Wilde's
verses belong to a class which is the special terror
of the reviewers, the poetry which is neither
good nor bad, which calls for neither praise nor

z8z

The Life of Oscar Wilde

ridicule, and in which we search in vain for any
personal touch of thought or music." Lower
down, " The great fault of all such writing as
this is the want of Uterary sincerity which it
displa}^. For instance, Mr Wilde brings into
his verse the names of innumerable birds and
flowers, because he likes the sound of their
names, not because he has made any observa-
tion of their habits. He thinks that the meadow-
sweet and the wood-anemone bloom at the same
time, that that shy and isolated flower, the
harebell 'breaks across the woodlands in
masses,' ' Uke a sudden flush of sea,' and that
owls are commonly met with in mid-ocean.'*
Strong exception is next taken to the sensual
tone of the poems, and the review concludes
with the following: "This book is not with-
out traces of cleverness, but it is marred
everj^where by imitation, insincerity, and bad 1

taste." ;

This reviewer was no doubt sincere, for we '

find in his comments the repetition of much that^ j

so far, we have heard raised up in blame against
the young poet. We have* heard him spoken
of as '' an average sort of man " ; we know
that his educational weakness was a neglect of ;

the rudiments — ^in this case he is blamed for a
lack of the botanical and zoological rudiments ;

182 t

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and we have already seen him charged with
imitation of others. Moreover, he is here once
more rebuked for that imprudent manner of
his of talking about the physical beauties of
man and woman which later on was to render
him such signal disservice. It was a habit
gained from his classical training and his en-
thusiasm for the Uterature of the ancients ; but
it was a literary habit which in modem days was
fraught with considerable danger.

The Athenaum gave him the place of honour
in its number for 23rd July 1881. The long
review of his poems occupied its first page. The
review is a very careful one, well-written, as are
all the reviews in that periodical which stands
first amidst the critical papers of the world. It
was evidently the work of a man who was not
biassed either for or against the young poet, and
who had very conscientiously prepared himself
for his task as the critic of the book. The
review was an unfavourable one. It begins:
" Mr Wilde's volmne of poems may be regarded
as the evangel of a new creed. From other
gospels it differs in coming after, instead of be-
fore, the cult it seeks to estabUsh." " We fail
to see however," continues the reviewer, after
an exposition of Oscar Wilde's teachings, " that
the apostle of the new worship has any distinct

183

The Life of Oscar Wilde

message." Lower down, " Turning to the exe-
cution of the poems there is something to ad-
mire. Mr Wilde has a keen perception of some
aspects of natural beauty. Single lines might
be extracted which convey striking and accurate
pictures. The worst faults are artificiality and
insincerity, and an extravagant accentuation of
whatever in modem verse most closely ap-
proaches the estilo cuUo of the sixteenth century."
An able and scientific, if not very charitable^
requisitoire bearing out the charges in this in-
dictment follows. The charge of imitation is
particularly insisted upon.

" The sonnet on the ' Massacres of the Chris-
tians in Bulgaria ' reflects Milton's sonnet on
the ' Massacres in Piedmont.' The ' Garden
of Eros * recalls at times Mr Swinburne — ^at
times Alexander Smith. In the descriptions of
flowers which occur in the poem last named
there is a direct and reiterated imitation of
Shakespeare.

* Some violets lie

That will not look the gold sun in the face
For fear of too much splendour ' —

reminds one of the

* Pale primroses

That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.'
184

The Life of Oscar Wilde
Mr wade's

' Budding marjoram, which but to kias
Would sweeten Cytheraea's lips ' —

and his

' Meadow-sweet
Whiter than Juno's throat '

brings back the

' Violets dim.
But sweeter than the Uds of Juno's eyes
Or Cytheraea's breath/

And the ' rustling bluebells ' — ^rustling bluebells
is a vile phrase — ^that come

' Almost before the blackbird finds a mate,
And overstay the swallow '

are but the daffodils

' That come before the swallow dares/

'' Traces of this kind of imitation abound, and
there is scarcely a poet of high mark in the
present century whose influence is not per-
ceptiUe/'

The conclusion is not an inspiring one :
"Work of this nature has no element of en-
durance^ and Mr Wilde's ix>ems, in spite of some
grace and beauty as we have said, will, when their
temporary notoriety is exhausted, find a place
on the shelves of those only who hunt after the
curious in Uteratiure. They may, perhaps, serve

x85

The Life of Oscar Wilde

as an illustration in some chapter on the revival
in the nineteenth century of the Gongorism of
the sixteenth."

Against the charge of imitation Wilde's warm-
est friends will not be able — ^were they desirous
of so doing — ^to defend him. He was essentially
an artist^ and the artist is essentially imitative.
Art is imitation. The only original creation
which is not the reproduction of anything else of
which we know is the creation of the world, and
on that circumstance the data are too vague for
us to be quite certain that here too imitation did
not overhang the labour. Models were certainly
not lacking, or the astronomers have misled us.
There has never been a writer yet against whom
charges of plagiarism have not been brought.
Of those charges MoUdre briefly and wittingly
exonerated himself. MoUdre was in the right.
The artist is entitled to appropriate for his own
treatment the thoughts, the conceptions of
others. It is not the highest form of Uterary
art, but it gives pleasiu^e, and it is a tribute to the
man from whom the borrowing took place. It
seems that it would be as unfair to say that a
prima donna who sings us the Jewel Song out
of " Faust " ought not to be Ustened to because
we have heard other prime danne sing that song
before she came upon the stage. It is one of

i86

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the most detestable axioms of commercial Philis-
tinism that the exclusive right in a thought or
a comparison belongs to the man who first voiced
them. In the RepubUc of Letters and amongst
true artists no such proprietary instinct prevails.
It is the true artist's greatest joy to feel that he
has given forth fecundating atoms which shall
breed beauty in ages to come.

Most of the reviews were equally unfavour-
able. In some^ private enmity was allowed to
show itself. The notice which appeared in
Punch may be humorous^ it is certainly not
marked with courtesy. As a specimen of the
kind of criticism of himself^ which Oscar Wilde
had provoked, some extracts from this notice
may be quoted. It commences thus : —

" Mr Lambert Streyke in The Colonel pub-
lished a book of poems for the benefit of his
followers and his own ; Mr Oscar Wilde has
followed his example.*' As Mr Hamilton points
out, the character of Lambert Streyke, in
Btu*nand's adaptation The Colonel^ is that of a
paltry swindler, who shamming aesthetic tastes
imposes upon a nimiber of rather silly ladies,
and is finally exposed by The Colonel.

The review continues : *' The cover is con-
summate, the paper is distinctly precious, the
binding is beautiful, and the type is utterly too.

187

The Life of Oscar Wilde

' Poems/ by Oscar Wilde, that is the title of the
book of the aesthetic singer, which comes to us
arrayed in white vellum and gold. There is a
certain amount of originaUty about the binding,
but that is more than can be said for the inside
of the volume. Mr Wilde may be aesthetic, but
he is not original. This is a volume of echoes,
it is Swinbmne and water, while here and there
we notice that the author has been reminiscent
of Mr Rossetti and Mrs Browning.*'

The poems were commercially a great success,
and this success pleased Oscar Wilde very much.
He used to speak with pride of the fact that his
volume of poems had run into four editions in
as many weeks. For the rest, as his powers
developed he came to look upon this early work
in the hght of a pech^ de jeunesse. Certainly the
author of " Keats' Love-letters " and other of
his later poems could not help but be critical
towards the verse contained in this volume.
Yet such as it is it has outUved the various
periods of notoriety which brought their author's
name so prominently before the world. Re-
cently repubUshed in America by Mr Mosher of
Portland a large and constant demand for the
book continues.

Already at the time of its original pubUcation
the American edition met with great success. In

i88

The Life of Oscar Wilde

a paragraph in The World for 9th November 1881
we read : " Mr Oscar Wilde has arranged to
leave England next month for America where
he wiU deUver lectures on Art subjects. Mr
Wilde's volimie of poems, which has had a very
large sale in America, will have prepared the
way for him and no doubt insured him a brilUant
reception in that country. I hear that Mr Wilde
is also making arrangements for bringing out an
original play before he leaves London.'* The
play here referred to is " Vera," a Nihilist
drama. It was not produced until much later
in America, where it met with instant failure.
The great objection to the play was the fact
that it contains only one female role, that of
Vera, the NihiUst heroine. This drama has been
printed, and can be obtained in London, with
various annotations.

It was not, as amiably represented by Edmund
Yates, as the author of a successful volume of
poems that Oscar Wilde received encouragement
to go to America to lecture. It was suggested
to him that a good deal of curiosity existed in
that coimtry in " the ^Esthetic Movement and
School,*' that his personality aroused interest,
and that a profitable lecturing campaign might
be carried out there. At the same time he was
anxious to produce " Vera,** which he had not

189

The Life of Oscar WUde

been able to place upon the stage in London.
He had no arrangement with any impresario
when he left England. Major Pond afterwards
undertook to " run him " in the States ; that is
to say after his appearance at the Chickering
Hall and his success there.

He sailed on board the Arizona on Saturday,
24th December 1881, his original intention being
to deliver one lecture on the " Recent Growth
of Art in England," and he proposed to be
absent for three or four months. A few days be-
fore his departure there appeared in The World,
under the heading " The Lights of London,"
a sketch of him by H. B., described as " Ego
Upto Snufl&bus Poeta," with certain humorous
verses attached, of which the following may be
quoted :

" Albeit nurtured in democracy

And liking best that state Bohemian
Where each man borrows sixpence and no man
Has aught but paper collars ; yet I see
Exactly where to take a liberty.

Better to be thought one, whom most abuse

For speech of donkey and for look of goose,
Than that the world should pass in silence by.

Wherefore I wear a sunflower in my coat
Cover my shoulders with my flowing hair

Tie verdant satin round my open throat.
Culture and love I cry, and ladies smile,
And seedy critics overflow with bile
While with my Prince long Sykes's meal I share."
190

The Life of Oscar WUde

The parody meant to be friendly, but there
can be no doubt that it aroused bitter feelings
of self-reproach in Oscar Wilde's mind. Of self-
reproach, but also of indignant revolt against
the order of things which in these modem days
condemns a man of action to inactivity, who^ if
he would emerge from the stagnant obscurity
to which the world condenms him, must play the
part of pantaloon. Vital, full of genius and of
that physical energy which is the genius of the
body, fitted for any part that the world has ever
yet bestowed upon a man, he found himself at
twenty-seven years of age crossing the Atlantic
in masquerade, to amuse, to be laughed at, and
in his bitter humiUation to appear to take
pleasure in the part. In the whole of his
mournful career few periods can have been more
full of suffering. We reach here the heights of
tragedy to which Shakespeare attains in '^ King
Lear." Higher heights, for the king was here a
youth. We are to remember too that the man
was a man of genius, and that being so he could
aot help but know it.

191

CHAPTER IX

Oscar Mode's Remark about the Atlantic — He is Interviewed
— ^His Personal Appearance— Alleged Resemblance to
Irving — Oscar Wilde and the Actors — How Irving once
recalled Wilde's look — Oscar's Lecture at the Chickering
Hall— The Opinion of New York--Oscar Wilde at Boston
— ^The Harvard Students — A Fiasco of Burlesque — ^The
Gentleman and the Boors — ^Boston's Tribute to the Gentle-
man— His Lecturing Tour — ^His Varied Fortunes — ^Dif-
ferent Impressions of Oscar Wilde — Oscar Wilde and Walt
Whitman — Oscar \^^lde's Kindness — ^His £ff<»rts on behalf
of an English Friend — He Rescues a Starving Chicago
Sculptor— Oscar Wilde and the Moncton Y^.CA.— The
Bunco Steerers — ^American Dry Goods — " Robert Els-
mere " as a Top-Dressing — ^The Production of " Vera " —
A Paragraph in Punch — ^What America did for Oscar Wilde.

The next thing that London heard about Oscar
Wilde was that on arriving in New York he had
declared himself disappointed with the Atlantic.
This remark of his was seized upon by his critics
as a further proof of the man's intolerable conceit
and arrogance. As a matter of fact it was the
very simple expression of the feeling with which
most people who cross the Atlantic for the first
time look back on the passage when that voyage
has been performed during fine weather. One
expects a tumultuous sea, a succession of awe-
inspiring spectacles^ great heights, and ab3rsmal

192

The Life of Oscar Wilde

depths of surging waters ; and^ when the sea is
cahn — ^well, it is cakn. The man could not say
the simplest thing without exciting malevolent
criticism.

Before he landed Oscar Wilde was^ as is usual
in America with visitors of distinction^ " inter-
viewed" by various reporters who had come
out to meet the Arizona. The report which
appeared in the New York Herald gives, as
he himself declared, the best account of what
he said, and may therefore be reproduced
here.

" Men may come and men may go, but it is
not every day that an apostle (thwaite) of
xsthetidsm comes to the shores of America.
It was for this reason that the Herald reporter
met Mr Oscar Wilde at the first available place —
namely, quarantine.

"Mr Wilde was not at all adverse to the
American process of interviewing, and began by
informing the reporter that he had come to the
United States * to lecture on the Renaissance '
which he defined as the ' revival of the intimate
study of the correlation of all the arts.'

'' • I shall lecture,' said Mr Wilde, a Uttie
reservedly, ' in Chickering Hall on the Renais-
sance. My future movements will depend en-
tirely upon the results of my lectiu'e in a business
n 193

The Life of Oscar WUde

sense. I have come here with the intention of
producing upon the American stage a play
which I have written^ and which I have not^ for
reasons, been able to produce in London. It is
exceedingly desirable that it should be produced
with a cast of actors who shall be thoroughly able
to represent the piece with all the force of its
original conception.'

" ' But/ said the reporter, ' do you not intend
to produce a volume of poems while you are in
America ? '

** ' No, I shall not, certainly for some time to
come, publish another volume, but I hardly care
to say what the future may develop.'

" * You will certainly lecture, however ? ' said
the reporter.

" ' I certainly shall, but I do not know if I
shall lecture in other cities besides New York.
It will depend entirely upon what encourage-
ment I find in the acceptance of my school of
philosophy.'

" *Do you, then, call ** aesthetidsm " a philo-
sophy ? ' asked the reporter.

" * Most certainly it is a philosophy. It is the
study of what may be found in art. It is the
pursuit of the secret of life. Whatever there
is in all art that represents the eternal truth is
an expression of the great underlying truth. So

194

The Life of Oscar Wilde

far aestheticism may be held to be the study of
truth in art/ y

" ' iEsthetidsan/ said the reporter, ' has been
understocc^in America to be a bUnd groping
after something which is entirely intangible.
Can you, the exponent of aestheticism, give an
interpretation which shall serve to give a more
respectable standing to the word ? '

" ' I do not know,' said Mr Wilde, * that I can
give a much better definition than I have al-
ready given- But whatever there has been in
poetry since the time of Keats, whatever there
has been in art that has served to devolve the
underlying principles of truth ; whatever there
has been in science that has served to show to
the individual the meaning of truth as expressed
to humanity — ^that has been an exponent of
aestheticism/ *'

And so the two augurs parted, and without a
smile.

Of Oscar Wilde's personal appearance at the
time of his landing in New York it may be re-
corded that when the late Sir Henry Irving ar-
rived in America on his first visit to the States
it was generally said that he much reminded
people of Wilde. In Frederic Daly's mono-
graph, ** Henry Irving," we find the following
passage in the chapter describing the reception

195

The Life of Oscar WUdc

given to the great actor on his landing in New
York :—

*' But the only unkind thing said of Mr Irving
on his arrival was that he resembled Mr Oscar
Wilde. 'The figure was muscular^ as the
aesthete's was, and the face was long and a trifle
like his ; but there was far more strength in it,
and it was more refined and manly.' Thus
there was a dash of bitterness in Mr Irving's first
American cup, though the writer who com-
mended the chaUce to his Ups was not without a
desire to sweeten the draught."

At the time of Sir Henry's first visit to
America, Oscar Wilde had not yet shown him-
self. He was still masquerading and mmnming ;
and if there is one person in the world for whom
the hardworking and conscientious actor, the
sincere artist, has a dislike, it is the man who
acts, as an amateur, by grimace and posture on
the stage of Ufe. Oscar Wilde's worst enemies
were amongst the actors, and the spirit that
prompted this resentment was not always the
natural and excusable feeling that vexed Henry
Irving when he, the conscientious artist, found
himself compared to a man as to whom he did
not then understand on what he based his claims
to rank as an artist. The same feeling was
shown by Coquelin the younger, who is of

196

The Life of Oscar Wilde

modem actors one of the most hardworking^ and
in " The Story of an Unhappy Friendship " we
find in this connection the following reference :
" I had invited him to lunch with me at Paillard's
to meet CoqueUn cadet. . . . Coquelin cadet
was not greatly impressed by my friend ; and I
imagine that, as a general rule, Oscar Wilde did
not have much success with actors. These may
have thought his affectation, harmless as it was,
an infringement on their own rights — a trespass
on their domain."

When catastrophe came upon him there were
two actors who most zealously worked to com-
plete his downfall ; but in both cases there was
personal animosity.

It is difiicult to trace any resemblance between
Oscar Wilde in 1881 and Henry Irving some
years later. Yet, on one occasion, one who knew
both men did notice the most striking and ex-
traordinary likeness. This man was attending
one night the performance of the " Lyons Mail "
in the beautiful Prince of Wales' Theatre in
Birmingham. In the scene where Lesurques,
having been denounced by the witnesses from
the inn, makes his pathetic appeal to one of the
women to speak the word which admitting her
mistake shall absolve him from the horrible
charge which has been brought against him^

197

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and the witness tnms mournfully but resolutely
away, Lesurques' face assumed a look of agony
and horror, as the vista of what lay before him
opened out — sl look in which the blood rushed
to the face and made it turgid and vultuous,
there was at the same time a distending of the
eyeballs, which seemed about to leap from th^
sockets, a twisting and contortion of the mouth
roughly kneaded into a mass of agony by
torturing hands, while the face lengthened as
though by two crushing and simultaneous blows
on each cheek it had been flattened downwards.
The look of unspeakable anguish and dismay
was cast sideways at the woman in whose silence
Lesurques read his ruin, shame,' and death. The
spectator to whom reference has been made fell
back in his chair from excess of emotion at the
sight of a piece of acting so consummate. At
that moment Irving presented the exact facial'
picture of Oscar Wilde, as looking sideways at
the foreman of the jury from his place in the
dock in the Old Bailey he listened to the verdict
that meant to him ruin, shame, and death.

The lecture at Chickering Hall was a great
success. We read in the New York World the
following account of Oscar Wilde's tUbiU before
the American pubHc : —

'' It is seldom that Chickering Hall has con*
198

The Life of Oscar Wilde

tained so fine an audience as that which gathered
there last evening (Monday, 9th January 1882)
to see Mr Oscar Wilde, and to listen to his ex-
position of those pecuUar views which have dis-
tinguished him from everyday folk in England.
And Bfr Wilde was well worth seeing, his short
breeches and silk stockings showing to even
better advantage upon the stage than in the
gilded drawing-rooms, where the young apostle
has hitherto been seen in New York. No sun-
flower, nor yet a lily, dangled from the button-
hole of his coat; indeed, there is room for
reasonable doubt as to whether his coat had
even one button-hole to be put to such artistic
use. But judging his coat by the laws of the
Philistines it was a well-fitting coat and looked
as though it had been made for the wearer as a
real coat and not as a mere piece of decorative
drapery. Promptly at eight o'clock the young
lecturer came upon the stage, and with the
briefest possible introduction from Colonel Morse
Mr Wilde began his lectiire/'

In the New York review. The Nation, appeared
at the end of that week a long article analysing
the lecture and giving the impressions of the
audience.^ It was written by a representative
man, who admits at the very outset of his re-

> Reprinted in the Appendix.
199

The Life of Oscar Wilde

marks that Oscar Wilde's lecture was a success.
Yet his conclusion was that " Mr Wilde was
essentially a foreign product and can hardly
succeed in this country. What he has to say
is not new, and his extravagance is not extra-
vagant enough to amuse the average American
audience. His knee-breeches and long hair are
good as far as they go ; but Bimthome has really
spoiled the pubUc for Wilde."

He was not taken seriously by many. An
intimate friend of his relates that the only re-
ference which he ever heard Oscar Wilde make
to the coarse things of Uf e was in connection with
this lecture. " As soon as it was over," he said,
'' a number of fashionable young men who had
been present, and who met me at the club to
which I went that night, wished to take me out
to the night-houses of New York. * Of course,'
they said, * after lecturing on Art and Culture,
you will want to go and see the girls.' "

From a commercial point of view the lecture
was a decided success, and at once a proposal
was made to Oscar Wilde by that enterprising
lecture-agent, the late Major Pond, who offered
to " run him " for a series of lectures throu^
the States. It has been generally understood
that this series of lectures was very successful,
that Oscar Wilde's progress through the States

200

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was a triumphant one, and that the venture re-
sulted in great financial benefit to himself and
his impresario. Major Pond, however, himself
stated, during his last visit to England and at a
time when he had visited Hall Caine at Greeba
Castle to endeavour to persuade the novelist to
undertake a lecture-tour under his manage-
ment, that Oscar Wilde's lectures had not been
successful, and that he had abandoned the tour
before the entire Ust of towns arranged for had
been visited. This statement was made, how-
ever, at a time when everybody who had any-
thing to say in detriment to Oscar Wilde was
only too ready to give utterance to it. At the
same time the Major was speaking to two men
whom he knew to be friends of Wilde — ^which
allows it to be supposed that he was speaking
the truth ; and another thing is that Major Pond
had been speaking very freely about the different
men whom he had " run," and the financial re-
sults which had been obtained.

The first town that Oscar Wilde visited after
leaving New York was Boston, where from the
very nature of the place and the bent of its in-,
habitants he might have been assured of a large
and attentive audience. The audience was, in-
deed, large, but it was not a representative one.
It was mainly composed of the curious who had

201

The Life of Oscar WUde

been attracted by the announcement that a
number of Harvard students, dressed up in a
burlesque of the " aesthetic costume/' intended
to be present, and most probably would " guy "
the lecturer. A large audience congregated to
see the fun, but the prominent Bostonians
stayed away. The masqueraders waited until
Oscar Wilde had stepped upon the platform, and
then trooped in in single file, each assuming a
demeanour more absurd than that of the man
who followed him. There were sixty youths in
the procession, and all were dressed in swallow-
tail coats, knee-breeches, flowing wigs and green
ties. They all wore large lilies in their button-
holes, and each man carried a huge sunflower
as he Umped along. Sixty front seats had been
reserved for the Harvard contingent, and it was
amidst shouts of laughter that they filed into
their places. The effect that they had wished
to produce was, however, spoiled to some extent
by the fact that Oscar Wilde had for that occasion
discarded his pecuhar costume and appeared in
ordinary evening-dress, so that those of the
audience to whom his usual appearance was not
familiar entirely missed the point that the
Harvard students wished to make. The young
men behaved with Uttle deconmi. Though they
did not " guy *' the lecturer, whose counter-

202

The Life of Oscar Wilde

manoeuvre had somewhat abashed them, they
took the opportunity of such pauses as occurred
during the lecture when Oscar Wilde paused
to drink water, to applaud in a most vigorous
and derisive manner. Oscar Wilde, however,
triumphed in the end, as an EngUsh gentleman i j \
always will triumph in a contest with boors. \\^ '
On the following day there appeared in that y , y
excellent paper, The Boston Evening Transcript / ^ ' • ^' •
(2nd February 1881) the following account of the 1 ,

lecture, which shows with what tact and success '* '* *^ ^ .
the young foreigner turned the tables on the men
who had tried to discomfit him : —

** Boston is certainly indebted to Oscar Wilde
for one thing — the thorough-going chastening of
the superabounding spirits of the Harvard fresh-
man. It will be some time, we think, before a
Boston assemblage is again invaded by a body
of college youths, massed as such, to take pos-
session of the meeting. This is not unimportant, ;
for if the thing should grow into a practice and '
succeed, an3rthing in the way of pubUc enter-
tainments here must finally be done with the
leave only of the youngest and most ill-bred
class of Harvard students. Whether in his first
off-hand observation, or in the pointed remarks
scattered through his address, or in the story he
told of the Oxford boys and Mr Ruskin, nothing

ao3

The Life of Oscar Wilde

could have been more gracious, more dignified,
more gentle and sweet, and yet more crushing,
than the lecturer's whole demeanouir to them,
and its influence upon the great audience was
very striking. A goodly number of the latter,
it seemed to us, had gone there to see the fun,
in hopes of a jolly row ; but the tide of feeling
was so completely turned by Mr Wilde's cour-
teous and kindly dignity that even this portion
of the audience took sides with him, and hissed
down every attempt on the part of the rougher
element to disconcert or interrupt the speaker
by exaggerated and ill-timed applause. Mr
Wilde achieved a real triumph, and it was by
right of conquest, by force of being a gentleman
in the truest sense of the word. His nobility
not only obliged him — ^it obliged his would-be
mockers — ^to good behaviom:. He crowned his
triumph, and he heaped coals of fire upon those
curly and wiggy heads, when he, with simplicity
and evident sincerity, made them an offer of a
statue of a Greek athlete to stand in their
gymnasium, and said he should esteem it an
honour if they would accept it. This really
seemed to stun the boys, for they even forgot to
recognise the offer with applause. It was a lovely
though sad sight, to see those dear silly youths
go out of the Music Hall in slow procession,

204

The Life of Oscar Wilde

hanging their heads meekly^ and trjdng to avoid
observation^ followed by faint expressions of
favour from their friends^ but also with some
hisses. A lady near us said, ' How mortified I
should be if a son of mine were among them I '
We think that everyone who witnessed the
scene on Tuesday evening must feel about it
very much as we do, and that those who came
to scoff, if they did not exactly remain to pray,
at least, left the Music Hall with feelings of
cordial liking, and perhaps, ta their own sur-
prise, of respect for Oscar Wilde."

" Courteous and kindly dignity '' : that was,
perhaps, the trait in Oscar Wilde's character
which won him such enthusiastic friendships, and
so fervent a following of admirers.

The conduct of these Harvard lads was re-
membered at the time when it was the popular
thing to heap abuse on Oscar Wilde, and in 1895
many of the baser American prints retold the
story, but gave the beau rSle to the lads who had
been so sorely discomfited. Some Rochester
students who had imitated the pranks of Har-
vard also came in for conmiendation when to
have flouted Oscar Wilde at any time in his career
was supposed to entitle a man to social recog-
nition and gratitude. But Rochester did not^
in fact, come off any better in the encounter

205

The Life of Oscar WUde

between brains and manners with stupidity and
boorishness than Harvard had done.

By his lecture and especially by his demeanour
in the course of its dehvery Oscar Wilde won
many friends in Boston ; and that city of learning
having set the seal of its high approval both on
the lecturer and the lecture, the respectful at-
tention of cultured Americans throughout the
States was, at least, ensured to him. Some of
the Boston ladies expressed the highest en-
thusiasm for the handsome young poet. Oscar
Wilde's behaviour towards them only increased
the respect with which he had come to be re-
garded.

" Oh, Mr Wilde," said to him at a reception
by a young lady, "you have been adored in
New York, but in Boston you will be wor-
shipped."

" But I do not wish to be worshipped," said
Oscar.

A circumstance which made for such success
as he enjoyed during his lecture-tour was the
support given by the Irish-Americans to the son
of Speranza. Certain remarks in his lectures in
which England and EngUsh society were scath-
ingly criticised appealed strongly to this section
of his audiences. " To disagree with three-
fourths of all England on all points is one of the

ao6

The Life of Oscar Wilde

first elements of sanity/' is one of these remarks.
But for the Americans^ in general^ there was such
praise in some of his sayings as may have satis-
fied the ahnost morbid national self-conscien-
tiousness of that country. '' It is rather to
you/' he said, in the course of his lecture on the
English Renaissance, " that we turn to perfect
what we have begun. There is something
Hellenic in your air and world. You are yoimg ;
' no hungry generations tread you down/ and
the past does not mock you with the ruins of a
beauty, the secret of whose creation you have
lost. Love art for its own sake, and then all
things that you need will be added to you."
The Americans called this '* taffy," but they
liked it.

From Boston he went to Omaha, where he
lectured on "Decorative Art." In the course
of the lecture he described American furniture
as " not honestly made and out of character."
This remark may not have pleased his audience,
but it was a plain expression of the truth, and
that he made it shows that he had an observant
eye, and even in the matter of household furni-
ture could tell bad workmanship from good.
Only last year there was pubUshed in London a
book by J. Morgan Richards, one of the keenest
American business men Uving, who speaking

207

The Life of Oscar Wilde

about the various kinds of goods which American
commerce had imsuccessfully tried to introduce
into England^ specially refers to American
furniture, which he describes in almost the very
words which the young sesthete used in his
lecture in Omaha. When in an obituary notice
of Oscar Wilde that wonderful writer, Ernest La
Jeimesse, said of him, // savait tout (he knew
everything), he advanced a proposition which
Oscar Wilde's admirers could support with
nimierous arguments and illustrations.

" Wherever he went in the States," says Mr
Walter Hamilton, "' he created a sensation, and
it was gravely asserted that he had been induced
to cross the Atlantic in order to work up an
interest in " Patience," the satire of that opera not
having been sufficiently understood in the States
except by reading people. Such an idea had
probably never entered his head ; he is scarcely
the man to condescend to become an advertising
mediimi for a play which professes to ridicule
nearly everything he holds sacred in art or
poetry, but his visit did certainly have a most
beneficial effect upon the success of the piece,
which, beyond a certain point, had created Uttle
interest amongst middle-class Americans, whose
ideas of cultiure are only awakened by an oc-
casional visit to Europe." Mr Hamilton in his

208

The Life of Oscar Wilde

commendable enthusiasm for Oscar Wilde is
here rather too severe both on the middle-class
Americans and on Gilbert and SuUivan's
operetta. The middle-class Americans are cer-
tainly not lacking in culture; in this respect^
indeed, they show themselves superior to the
middle-classes of Europe. And as to '' Patience "
the main idea of that amusing and inspiriting
piece is one which men have appreciated ever
since stage-plays first existed. It is a theme
which has been handled by most dramatists.
It is Mouse's Tartuffe treated in Gilbert's
kindly and humane manner. It would appeal
to anyone who had never heard of Oscar Wilde
or of the ** aesthetic movement." This shght
opera -bouffe parodies in advance the great
movement that is still going on in France — the
struggle between the inteUectuels and the miUtary
party. It is very much more than an amusette,
though as such, thanks to SuUivan's deUghtful
music, it takes the highest place amongst pieces
of its kind.

Louisville was another dty which he visited,
and where he lectured on '* Decorative Art."
Some offence was taken here at his description
of American houses as ** illy designed, decorated
shabbily, and in bad taste ** ; but on the whole
the reception was a favourable one, and the local
o aog

The Life of Oscar Wilde

papers were filled with flattering articles about
the lecturer.

His experiences were varied. In some cities
he had a fine welcome, and a large audience ; in
other places he was received with indifference,
or even ridicule, and the takings at the door of
the lecture-hall were not suflftcient to cover
Major Pond's expenses. At Denver he lectured
to a very rough audience, and he used to relate
that the week previously a man had been shot
in the pubUc room in which he lectmred there,
while he had turned his back on the crowd for
the purpose of examining a chromo-hthograph.
" Which shows," Oscar Wilde used to add,
"that people should never look at chromo-
lithographs."

" From the States he went to Canada, visiting
Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, and Tor-
onto ; in the latter city he was present at a
Lacrosse match between the Torontos and the
St Regis Indians, which he pronounced a charm-
ing game, quite ahead of cricket in some respects.
His lecture in the Grand Opera House, Toronto,
was attended by iioo persons, and wherever
he went his movements and lectures created
great interest."

" Charming " was at that time his favourite
word to express his approval. Later on he

210

The Life of Oscar Wilde

adopted the word " amazing " to describe any-
thing very good. The opposite feeling was
expressed by the word "tedious," which he
retained till the end of his hfe.

He proceeded from Canada to Nova Scotia,
lecturing at HaUfax on 8th October 1882, and
on the following day. The subjects of his
lectures were " The Decorative Arts " and " The
House Beautiful.'' The following account of his
personal appearance was given by a writer in the
Halifax Morning Herald, who prefaces his article
by referring to the " winning and poUte friendli-
ness" with which he was received by Oscar
WUde.

" The apostle had no lily, nor yet a sunflower.
He wore a velvet jacket which seemed to be a
good jacket. He had an ordinary necktie, and
wore a linen collar about number eighteen on a
neck half-a-dozen sizes smaller. His legs were
in trousers, and his boots were apparently the
product of New York art, judging by their
pointed toes. His hair is the colour of straw,
slightly leonine, and when not looked after, goes
climbing all over his features. Mr Wilde was
communicative and genial ; he said he found
Canada pleasant, but in answer to a question as
to whether European or American women were
the more beautiful he dexterously evaded his

azi

The Life of Oscar Wilde

querist : " That I cannot answer here, I shall
wait till I get in mid-ocean, out of sight of both
countries. Your women are pretty, especially
in the South, but the prettiness is in colour and
freshness and bloom, and most of your ladies will
not be pretty in ten years.'

" ' I beUeve you discovered Mrs Langtry ? '
A look of rapture came to Oscar's face, and with
a gesture, the first of the interview, he said :
' I would rather have discovered Mrs Langtry
than have discovered America. Her beauty is
in outUne perfectly moulded. She will be a
beauty at eighty-five. Yes; it was for such
ladies that Troy was destroyed, and well might
Troy be destroyed for such a woman.' "

He, on that occasion, expressed his opinion that
Poe was the greatest American poet; and of
Walt Whitman, he said that '* if not a poet, he
was a man who sounds a strong note, perhaps
neither prose nor poetry, but something of his
own that is grand, original and imique."

It would seem from the account of The Morn-
ing Herald reporter that Oscar Wilde during his
Canadian tour had been dyeing his hair, for never
at any time could its natural colour have been
described as the colour of straw. It was of a
pecuharly rich brown, a very beautiful colour,
and it was opulent and abundant. During his

212

The Life of Oscar WUde

lecture - tours Oscar Wilde always carried a
" make-up " box with him. As he was playing
a part he seemed to feel that he might enUst
all the advantages that actors assiraie. The
reference to the absence of gestures on his part
is interesting. This struck other people who
met Oscar Wilde in the States, elsewhere than
on the lecture-platform. Some people male-
volently spoke of it as affected languor : one
very prominent American statesman used to
describe a visit he paid to Oscar in his hotel in
Boston, where he found him lying on a sofa
smoking cigarettes, and he said that he had been
most unfavourably impressed by seeing a yoimg
man in such a state of " slackness." This
gentleman who was a person of very great im-
portance in the States seems to have expected
to find Oscar Wilde " hustUng " round his room.
It did not occur to him, nor to the other people
who blamed Oscar for affected languidness, that
the exertion of lecturing to large audiences night
after night, in addition to the filling of innumer-
able social engagements, nought make it necessary
for the young man to rest himself whenever op-
portunity to do so offered itself. Poor Oscar
Wilde ! The simplest things he did were turned
into reproaches against him. For every act of
his an evil motive was uncharitably devised.

213

;o.<i

The Life of Oscar Wilde

One would fancy that he committed an tm-
•^^ pardonable offence in ever coming into the

' Li* world at all. He was accused of posturing on
his very death-bed. What ferocity does great
pre-eminence not arouse in the envious heart
of man 1

Some time after his visit to Halifax Oscar
Wilde visited Walt Whitman. The meeting was
not any more successful than was the meeting
between him and Paul Verlaine. Oscar Wilde
was " distressed " by the poverty of Walt Whit-
man's appearance^ his shabby attire^ and especi-
ally by the untidiness and squalor of the one
room in which the American poet hved. The
place was Uttered with great heaps of news-
papers^ for Walt Whitman collected everything
that was printed about him, and these papers
were strewn all over the room, and over them
was so thick a coat of dust that it was impossible
for any visitor to find a clean spot where to
sit down. Walt Whitman, primaeval, natural,
aboriginal, would feel Uttle sympathy for the
dandified Hellene. One may think of a meeting
between Alcibiades and Diogenes to imderstand
the lack of sympathy that must have reigned
during this memorable interview.

Oscar Wilde's great kindness of heart fre-
quently manifested itself during this lecture-tour.

214

The Life of Oscar Wilde

While in Philadelphia he made great efforts to
find a pubhsher for an American edition of the
poems of a friend of his, a yoxmg Oxford man,
who since has come to very high honours, and
whose verse was certainly of a very high order.
But at that time the young poet was unknown,
and the American pubUshers fought shy of the
expense of pubUshing the volume. At last one
firm agreed to produce the poems provided that
Oscar Wilde wrote a preface to the verse. He
at once agreed to do so, and the preface which
he wrote is one of the finest pieces of prose
that he had written up till then. The book was
printed in lamentable style ; the notions of the
publishers as to what constituted the " aesthetic
decoration '* of a volume were curious in the
extreme ; and the English poet-friend felt him-
self aggrieved by Oscar Wilde. After receiving
the book from America he wrote a letter to
Oscar putting a period to their friendship,
candidly stating that his poUtical ambitions
would be balked by its continuance, and parti-
cularly chiding him for having allowed his poems
to be produced in a style which could only cover
their author with ridicule.

Oscar Wilde's comment on this letter was
characteristic : " What he says," was his only
remark, " is hke a poor Uttle Unnet's cry by the

215

The Life of Oscar WUde

side of the road along which my immeasurable
ambition is sweeping forward." The poor man
was not to know to what a goal of glory he was
to reach, per varios casus per tot discnmina
rerum. The frantic applause of the Dresden
Opera-house fell short of the lonely grave in
Bagneux cemetery.

On his arrival in Chicago, where he lectured
afterwards to very large audiences, he received
a letter at his hotel from a young Irish sculptor
who told him of the misery in which he was
Uving, of the anguish that he, an artist, who felt
himself capable of great things, suffered to be
sUghted and ignored in such a dty as Chicago,
and begged him to come to the garret which was
his studio and look at his work and give him the
encouragement of his praise, if praise he could
find to give. Directly after receiving this letter
Oscar Wilde set out for the address given by the
writer, and after a hazardous exclusion into the
slums of Chicago foimd John Donoghue's abode.
He stayed with him for a long time, he praised
his work, he comforted him, he told him the
great consolation of F Art pour FArt, and he did
not leave him without commissioning him to do
a piece of work. The next evening John
Donoghue sitting amongst the audience in the
crowded lecture-hall suddenly heard Oscar Wilde

216

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in the course of his lectiire reproach the fashion-
able and distinguished men and women who
were listening with rapt attention to his words
with the fact that a young sculptor of undoubted
genius who was Uving in their midst was being
allowed by them in their ignorance and indiffer-
ence to Art to die of hunger and that starvation
which more rapidly kills the artist — the con-
temptuous neglect of the pubUc. He went on
to describe his visit to John Donoghue's studio ;
he spoke of the beautiful things that he had
seen there, of the beautiful things that this
young man could do, of the honour which he
could bring to the dty of Chicago if only people
would encourage his endeavours. The conse-
quence was that next day John Donoghue was
everywhere discussed in Chicago ; people flocked
to his studio ; commissions poured in ; and after
a very short while one of those munificent
patrons of art who exist in America alone,
as though Maecenas had transmigrated to the
States after the Fall of the Roman Empire, came
forward with an offer to maintain the young
man during a course of study in the aUliers of
France and Italy. John Donoghue's artistic
career was assured. He came to Europe, he
studied, he prospered. But he was not a great
man, nor was he a great artist. In Oscar Wilde's

ai7

The Life of Oscar WUde

adversity he had not a word of comfort to send
him^ but the drciunstances of his own death
seem to show that in his last da3rs he reproaches
himself for his ingratitude.

Mr Walter Hamilton describes a curious in-
cident which occurred towards the end of Oscar
Wilde's tour in Nova Scotia.

" After leaving Halifax, Oscar Wilde went to
lectm-e in several smaller towns in Nova Scotia,
amongst others to Moncton, where his experiences
were of a somewhat unpleasant description,
owing to a misunderstanding he had with a so-
called Yoimg Men's Christian Association ; it
arose thus : — ^Two committee men had been
negotiating to secm^e him. The Y.M.C.A. com-
mittee telegraphed to Mr Wilde's agent, offering
$75 for a lecture on Friday night. Mr Husted
answered that the terms were satisfactory for
Thursday night, and requested a reply. This
was about 4 p.m. At about 8 p.m., four hours
later, the Y.M.C.A. repUed that Thursday night
was satisfactory. Mr Wilde then rephed in
effect : ' Waited till 7, then had to dose with
other parties. Sorry.' Another committee of
townspeople had in the meantime closed with
Mr Wilde. Then the Y.M.C.A* obtained a writ
which was served on Mr Wilde. The Y.M.C.A.
laid damages at $200 ; Mr Husted offered 'to

ai8

The Life of Oscar Wilde

give them $20 and pay costs. This was not
accepted. Finally, Mr Estey and Mr Weldon
gave their bonds for $500 for Mr Wilde's
appearance. The action of the Y.M.C.A. is
generaUy condemned in the colony, both by
the very pious, who hft up their eyes and
hands in pious horror at one who attempts to
raise the love of Art and Beauty into a kind of
religious worship ; and by the ungodly, who see
that the Y.M.C.A. merely sought to fill its
coffers out of the attraction of the Arch Prophet,
irrespective of his teachings, and faiUng that,
feed their revenge by attempts to levy black-
mail.''

The incident is worth recording, because it
shows that Oscar Wilde's financial position to-
wards the end of his lecturing-tour was such
that he was not unwilling to accept the sum
of £1$ for travelling to a small town like
Moncton and lecturing there, and that he had no
objection to appearing under the auspices of a
Young Men's Christian Association. It also
shows that by this time Major Pond had deter-
mined his arrangement, for the name of Mr
Wilde's agent appears to have been Husted.

Yet he did not return to New York without
a substantial siun of money, and his mode of Uf e
there previous to his departure for Europe was

219

The Life of Oscar WUde

such that it attracted the attention of the New
York flash men. Oscar Wilde fell into the hands
of the " bunco steerers." He* was actually in-
volved into playing a game of poker with some
affable gentlemen whose acquaintance he had
made in a casual manner. They had intro-
duced themselves to him as having attended his
lecture in Boston with great edification to them-
selves. The result of the friendly game was
what might have been expected. Oscar Wilde
was cleared out of all the cash he had in his
pocket, and when he left the table he had to give
a cheque for a large amount on a New York
bank to settle what he owed as losses. However^
not long after he had left the house where he had
been fleeced it occurred to him that he had
simply been swindled, and promptly drove to
the bank and stopped the cheque. The men, it
appeared were notorious ** bunco steerers."

During his visit to America his irony did not
spare the Americans, and he gave utterance
to a few remarks which would not make for his
popularity amongst the people against whom
they were aimed. Some of these sayings he
afterwards used in his plays. He was, perhaps,
proudest of having defined American dry goods
as the productions of the American novelists.
The American novelists lui en ont gard^ une dent.

220

The Life of Oscar Wilde

On a subsequent occasion he found everybody in
the States reading " Robert Elsmere/' and dur-
ing a luncheon party in Dublin after his return
from the States he described how in the trains
every passenger seemed to have a cheap edition
of this book in his or her hands. '' As each page
is finished it is torn out and flung through the
window/' he said, "So that in the end the
American prairie will get a top-dressing of
Robert Elsmere."

One disappointment had awaited Oscar Wilde
in America ; he was unable to find a manager who
was prepared to produce " Vera/' so that in his
original purpose in going to America he was not
successful. ** Vera " was produced about a year
later in New York at a trial evening, but badly
mounted, badly played, it met with so unfavour-
able a reception that it was instantly withdrawn.
It was not a good play in the sense of a stage
piece. But it certainly merited to be spoken
of with more respect than in the following
paragraph in Punch, in which Wilde's disappoint-
ment at the Adelphi was recorded. In its
number for loth December 1881 the following
*• Impressions Du Theatre " appeared : *' The
production of Mr Oscar Wilde's play 'Vera*
is deferred. Naturally no one would expect a
Veerer to be at all certain : it must be, like a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

pretendedly infallible forecast, so very weather-
cocky. Vera is about Nihilism, this looks as if
there was nothing in it. But why did Mr O.
Wilde select the Adelphi for his first appearance
as a Dramatic Author, in which career we wish
him cordially all the success he may deserve ?
Why did he not select the Savoy ? Surely
where there's a Donkey Cart — ^we should say
D'Oyly Carte — ^there ought to be an opporttmity
for an 'Os-car ? "

" In answer to numerous inquiries we beg to
state that as far as we know the Wilds of Scot-
land are no relation to the Wildes of Ireland. —
Ed:*

Although he did not succeed in placing his
drama, and though the lecture-tour was not as
fruitful as he may have been led to expect after
his trimnphant reception both in New York and
in Boston, this year's travelling in America was
productive of the greatest good in the develop-
ment of his character. Brought into daily and
hourly contact with the most energetic of men,
his latent energy aroused itself. He returned to
Europe sharpened and stimulated to a degree
that made him almost irrecognisable. America
" had taken all the nonsense out of him," if so
trivial a phrase may be used in this connection.
The dealings he had had with men, the struggles

332

The Life of Oscar Wilde

both social and commercial in which he had in
the main trimnphed had given him experience
which years of life in London might never have
afforded. His eyes had, moreover, been opened
to the exact value, as an asset to a man who
wishes to reach to influence and power, of the
affectations which he had till then assimied. He
had had, so to speak, a sound commercial train-
ing during those twelve months in America.
The conclusion to which he came in the end was
that it would be to his interest to discard the
unworthy posturings which till then had dis-
figured him. He dropped his masquerade over
board into the Atlantic and never again assumed
it. And here masquerade appUes as much to
affectation of manner and speech as to the
actual disguise he had been wearing.

«a3

CHAPTER X

A Biaa of Moods — ^He goes to Paris — ^His Success there — ^Why
it was not Greater — Oscar Wilde and Edmond de Gon-
conrt — Oscar V^Ude and Daudet — His Visit to Victor
Hugo— His Imitation of Balzac — ^His Sincerity of Por-
pose— "The Duchess of Padua"-— The History of this
Play— Dr Max Meyerfdd's Version — Its Hi-fated Pro-
duction in Hamburg—" The Sphynx " and " The Harlot's
House " — Oscar VfUde as seen in Paris in 1883 — ^His Fine
Character — His High Morality — His Mode of Life — Oscar
Wilde and Paul Bonrget— Oscar ^^Jde's Straits— He is
forced to leave Paris — " Exit Oscar I " and Edmund
Yates^ Reply.

Oscar Wilde was a man of moods. He himself
used to speak of these moods as periods through
which he has passed. When he reached Paris
in the spring of 1883 he described himself as
beginning a new period of his life. He repudiated
all responsibihty for the Oscar Wilde of the
" aesthetic movement." " That was the Oscar
Wilde of the second period/' he used to say, " I
am now in my third period.*'

On returning from America, after a very short
stay in London, he proceeded immediately to
Paris. Here he definitely abandoned his peculiar
costmne. For a short time still he wore his hair
long, but he had not been very many daj^ in

234

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Paris before he discovered that an affectation
of Bohemianism was a pose which the men of
letters in France who counted had long since
abandoned. Murger's heroes were entirely out
of date. A transformation imposed itself, and
one day he went to the coiffeur^ from whose
hands he emerged with the appearance of a
gentleman in the mode of the day. He used to
explain that it had been on contemplating the
bust of Nero in the Louvre that he had decided
that hair must not be worn long, and he used to
speak of the style in which he then wore it as
" my Neronian coiffure." Very shortly after his
arrival in Paris Mr Theodore Child, the corre-
spondent of The World ^ recorded the event in his
journal in the following terms : ** Amongst other
illustrious visitors to Paris, besides the Gladstone
family, we have had and still have, Oscar Wilde.
Mr Wilde, is, of course, utterly unknown to the
French, and does not probably intend to take
any measures to make himself known. Last
week he was entertained at dinner by some
English and American artists and joiunalists,
and at dessert he made a very clever httle
speech on his American experience. Generally
speaking, Mr Wilde told us, while in America he
had to converse on art with people who derived
their notionsof paintingfromchromo-Uthographs,

F Its

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and their notions of sculpture from the figures in
front of the tobacconist's shops. In Colorado,
however, and the Rocky Mountains, Mr Wilde
was agreeably surprised by the aesthetic predis-
positions of the natives, and at Leadville in
particular, he found some of his own theories
on art-police fully accepted. " When I arrived
in Leadville,'* Mr Wilde said, " in the evening I
went to the Casino. There I found the miners
and pianist — sitting at a piano over which was
this notice : ' Please do not shoot at the pianist,
he is doing his best.' I was struck with this
recognition of the fact that bad art merits the
penalty of death, and I felt that in this remote
city, where the aesthetic applications of the re-
volver were already admitted in the case of
music, my apostolic task would be much simpli-
fied, as indeed it was."

Oscar Wilde had very tactfully come to the
conclusion that as there was a great deal of what
was ridiculous in the pretentions of the Oscar
Wilde of the " second period," it would be the
wisest thing to do, to laugh with his mockers,
and he certainly seemed to take huge deUght in
bringing out the funny aspects of what he called
his '' apostoUc task." He was full of anecdotes
about his American tour, and it is a great pity
that he never gave execution to the plan he had

aa6

The Life of Oscar Wilde

formed on leaving America of writing a volume
of his American impressions. It would have
been full of humour^ and from the nature of the
man the humour would have been kindly. He
was bitter only against affectation and pre-
tentiousness. The simple and kindly Americans
would have been spared the lash of his satire.

The story about the pianist in Leadville was
a favourite one of his, and he developed it as he
repeated it. On the 5th of May of that year he
was dining with Edmond de Goncourt who in
his diary thus records what Oscar Wilde told
him: —

" Dined with the poet Oscar Wilde.

'' This poet, who tells the most improbable
stories, gives us an amusing picture of a town
in Texas, with its population of convicts, its
revolver habits, its pleasure resorts, where one
reads on a notice : * Please not to shoot at the
pianist who is doing his best.' He tells us of the
hall at the Casino, which, as it is the biggest room
in the place, is used for the Assize-Court, and here
they hang criminals on the stage after the per-
formance. He told us that he had seen there a
man who had been hanged clinging to the scenery
u[Mrights, while the audience fired their revolvers
at him from their seats.

*' In those places, it would also appear, the

a«7

The Life of Oscar Wilde

theatrical managers look out for real criminals to
play the parts of criminals, and when * Macbeth '
is to be staged and a person is wanted for the
rdle of Lady Macbeth offers are made to a
woman who has been convicted for poisoning,
and who has just been released after serving her
sentence. One sees posters thus worded : ' The
part will be taken by Mrs X./ and, in brackets,
the words ' (lo Years Penal Servitude)/ ''

It may be noted that Monsieur de Goncourt
did not faithfully record in his diary the things
that he heard. He allowed his fine imagination
to play when he sat down to his Journal des
Goncourt. His entries have Uttle historical
value. He tised to " touch up " an anecdote ;
he used to add to a statement of fact. He was
alwa)^ preoccupied as to the effect that the
passage would produce on the reader. This
great artist would have made the ideal city
editor on a New York journal. In his diary for
1895 he records a conversation which he had
with a gentleman who told him of Wilde's ar-
rival at midnight at his mother's house in
Oakley Street, after his release on bail, in a
manner in which malevolence seems to have
guided his pen. The gist of this page is that
everybody was drunk in the house in Oakley
Street, and for this statement his informant's

228

The Life of Oscar WUde

narrative had not given the shadow of a sug-
gestion.

Theodore Child was in error when he wrote
that Oscar Wilde did not probably intend to take
any measures to make himself known in Paris.
He did take active measures. He had brought
with him from London a number of copies of his
volume of '' Poems/' and soon after he had settled
down in his rooms in the Hotel Voltaire on the
Quai Voltaire he sent his book accompanied by
a letter to a number of leading men in Paris,
both writers and painters. At the time of his
trial, in many drawing-rooms this volume and the
letter which had accompanied it were laid out
on view, as curiosities d'actualitS, and people were
able to convince themselves of the extraordinary
knowledge of French which these well-written
letters displayed. His advances were favourably
received — as such advances alwa3rs are in humane
and enlightened Paris — and many doors were
opened to him. He was frequently in the ex-
clusive society which numbered Edmond de
Goncourt amongst its ornaments ; he frequented
the leading painters of the impressionist school ;
and he was welcomed at the house of Sarah
Bernhardt where he met many of the most
distinguished people in Paris. He was generally
liked and admired, but he would certainly have

•«9

The Life of Oscar Wade

produced a better impression in literary Paris if
he had not deemed it necessary to " amaze " the
Parisians by telling them stories and making
statements to them^ which with all their bad-
auderie they could not accept as truthful fact.
For instance^ at an evening party on 21st April,
Oscar Wilde speaking to Monsieur de Goncourt
in the presence of a large munber of highly-
cultured people was heard to remark that the
only EngUshman who till then had read Balzac
was Swinburne. Such a statement as that would
appear to the people who overheard the remark,
nothing more than what the French call une
blague^ and Oscar Wilde would create the im-
pression of being un blagueur. Now no worse
impression can be created in Uterary Paris than
this. The Parisians have a certain reverence
for the things of Uterature and art ; they desire
these things to be treated with the respect that
is accorded to reUgion by others; and to be
paradoxical and outr6 about them is to forfeit
the attention of those whose good opinion it is
worth while to cultivate. It is to be feared that
Oscar Wilde was never really understood in Paris.
A man who does not take himself seriously in
Paris, as a writer or an artist, will never induce
people to take him seriously. A large number
of Parisians Ustening to Wilde's briUiant talk,

230

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and failing to perceive the humour which over-
hung his remarks simply set him down as a
charlatan who was trying to deceive them, and
resented the attempt. It is only since his death,
since the pubUcation of Jean Joseph-Renaud's
masterly translation of ** Intentions/' and the
writings which have appeared on "De Pro-
fundis" that the Parisian men of letters are
beginning to see that they had totally misunder-
stood the brilliant young man who made such
efforts to interest and amuse them. At the
same time it is not difficult to imagine what
effect must have been produced on an audience
of artists in Paris when Oscar Wilde told them —
a thing which he was at that time very fond of
repeating — ^that he used to spend hours at the
Louvre in rapt admiration before the Venus of
Milos. Alphonse Daudet who met him in those
days in Paris, both at his own house and at
soiries, notably at the house of the famous
painter of Parisian landscapes, de Nittis, con-
ceived from hearing him talk in this manner a
distrust of him which he was never able to cast
off. Now Daudet was very quick at noting the
salient traits in a man's character, and it shows
that Oscar Wilde must have dissembled his real
nature with the greatest skill, the most unfor-
tunate ability, for he was just of that exquisite

231

The Life of Oscar Wilde

artistic mould which would have delighted
Alphonse Daudet, while his kindness of heart
and great refinement would have won for him
the warm friendship of the impressionable
Southerner. Daudet was deceived by Oscar
Wilde's outward manner, which shows that he
must have exerted great powers to dissimulate
the superiority of his nature, just as others who
came into contact with Daudet by a similar
exertion of profoimd hypocrisy were able to
deceive him as to their worthlessness.

At Victor Hugo's house Oscar Wilde enjoyed
one evening no little success, although the
master himself did not interrupt his usual nap
to listen to his visitor: but it was just after
Swinburne's visit to Hugo's house and the
habitues of Hugo's salon were most interested
to hear Wilde speak of the English poet. There
was a lady there, a Polish princess, who had
translated some of Swinburne's poems into
French, who was so pleased with Oscar Wilde's
eloquent championship of the poet, against whom
a certain hostiUty reigned in that milieu, that
she became the speaking-trumpet of the young
Irishman's fame in the many good houses in
Paris which she visited.

Although Oscar Wilde had laid aside his
aesthetic masquerade there were certain points

23*

The Life of Oscar Wilde

about his dress which did not please the
Parisians. For one thing he used to wear fur-
coats. Of these he had two or three. One was
a very noticeable one^ being made of green cloth
with black brandebourgs. Now^ in those days
gentlemen did not wear fur-coats in Paris. It
was also his habit to have his hair curled every
day. There was too much " get-up " about his
appearance to please the Paris men of the world.
As a matter of fact, though Paris did not per-
ceive it, Oscar Wilde was paying to French
literature the compHment of modelling himself
on the great writer Balzac. He was then in a
period of imitation of this great writer for whom
his admiration increased with each year of his
Ufe. When at work at the Hotel Voltaire he
used to put on a white gown with a monkish
cowl, because it was in a dressing-gown like this
that Balzac, who wrote mostly at nights, used
to work. At the time when Balzac, who had
doomed himself for years to cehbacy and con-
tinence, at last went courting, the recluse as-
sumed all the graces of the contemporary
Parisian dandy. He wore the most elegant
costumes, he adorned himself with jewellery,
and he carried when he went abroad a walking-
stick which was so noticeable that it inspired
Delphine Gay with the subject of a novel, " La

>33

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Caiine de Monsieur de Balzac." In all these
points Oscar Wilde imitated the master with
whose industry and enthusiasm for Hterary art
he was endeavouring to imbue himself. He
dressed much after the fashion of the fops of
1848, he wore noticeable jewellery, and he
carried a stick which was the repUca of Balzac's
canne. This was a stick of ivory with the
pummel set with turquoises. The costume was
the outward sign of a very laudable effort. It
can be to nothing but the credit of any writer
to wish to imitate Balzac ; and if by adopting his
pecuUarities a man might hope to attain to any
degree of his powers of production and style,
one would Hke to see the whole Republic of
Letters curled as to the hair, bejewelled, dad
in 1848 costiunes, and carrying ivory sticks with
turquoise-stone pmnmels. But Paris did not
understand the suggestion tof Oscar Wilde's dress,
and did not beUeve that a man who seemed to
talk so flippantly had any real artistic strivings
in him. Oscar forgot that not any more in
Paris than in London, in London than in Berlin,
are men prone to a charitable interpretation of
any act of fellow man. He was labelled a poseur
when he was only trying by dressing a part to
enter into the very spirit of the man whom he
wished to imitate in his excellent qualities.

^34

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Many of the greatest actors which the stage has
ever produced would have failed utterly to re-
present the parts in which they most triumphed,
had they not been allowed to " dress the parts."
Paris might have understood this, but preferred
to disbelieve that any such strivings animated
the young man. Yet at that very time he was
actually inspiring himself from Balzac's example,
and at no period in his Ufe, except, perhaps, when
he was writing " De Profundis/' did he more
sternly discipline himself to that constant labour
which, as Balzac said, is the law of art. During
those months at the Hotel Voltaire he wrote that
great play ** The Duchess of Padua," which some
of his admirers rank with the Elizabethan master-
pieces. This play was originally written for
Mary Anderson, and while Oscar was yet in Paris
the manuscript was sent to her for her perusal.
She declined it, greatly to the author's secret
discomfiture. Mary Anderson probably saw
that it was not Ukely to succeed as a play for
the stage. This opinion proved itself in the
event to be a right one. The " Duchess " has
been tried twice in two different languages and
has failed each time. The first performance was
given in New York in the early nineties. It
gained a great succSs d'esHme, but it never came
to be considered a paying piece. Only last year

235

The Life of Oscar Wilde

negotiations were being made between a beauti-
ful young American actress^ who was anxious
to mount the play and take the part of the
Duchess, and a lady who owns the American
acting rights. The negotiations fell through on
other grounds but those of terms ; and when it
is recorded that the only fee demanded by the
holder of the copjnight for the right of perform-
ance was five pounds a week, it will be under-
stood at what a low figure the financial pos-
sibilities of the play were estimated in the
American theatrical world. But the play for all
that had warm admirers. Indeed, it was at the
suggestion of her mother that the young Ameri-
can actress referred to above had desired to
mount the " Duchess of Padua/' In a letter to
one of Oscar Wilde's friends this lady wrote : —

'' Many years ago I saw a performance (in
New York) of Oscar Wilde's play * The Duchess
of Padua ' with Laurence Barrett and Mina Gale
in the leading rdles. The play made a decided
impression on me, and I have often wondered
why it has not been revived."

This play has not been published in England,
but an excellent German translation by Doctor
Max Meyerfeld of Berlin appeared more than a
year ago. This version was produced in De-
cember 1904 at one of the leading theatres in

236

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Hamburg. It was not a success, and after three
nights was withdrawn. It cannot be said that
justice was done to it, nor that it had a fair
trial. The translation is excellent. Doctor
Meyerfeld has rendered Oscar Wilde's verse in
German verse of quite equal merit, nor has he
in any way sacrificed the original to the neces-
sities of translation. The German play is in
itself a fine piece of literature. The acting was,
however, deplorable. The man who played the
part of Guido was suffering from influenza, and
for this reason made a burlesque of the last act.
In this act the great scene is where the Duchess
finding Guido asleep in his prison addresses him
in impassioned language. The Duchess's fine
tirade was at the Hamburg theatre constantly
interrupted by the snufiling, sneezing, and cough-
ing of the sleeping hero. The Duchess was her-
self by no means word-perfect. But the climax
of misfortune was reached on the night of the
third performance when the actor who played
the part of the Cardinal suddenly went mad on
the stage and had to be removed vi et armis to a
limatic asylum. The Ofiicial Receiver in Oscar
Wilde's bankruptcy then intervened, questioning
the right of the poet's literary executors to give
Dr Meyerfeld the right to produce the play in
Germany; and under the circumstances the

^37

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Doctor thought it advisable to withdraw it
from the stage.*

His version was enthusiastically reviewed in
The Daily Chronicle by William Archer, who
saluted Oscar Wilde as having revealed himself
in this play a dramatic poet of very high rank.
It was this play which Oscar Wilde was writing
at the time when the Paris men of letters were
regarding him with suspicion as a literary char-
latan. As an artist, and as an intellect, there
were not more than three men in the Paris
literary world of that day who were the equals
of this literary charlatan. Some of his finest
verse was also written at this time, notably " The
Sphynx," over which he laboured with the appli-
cation of Flaubert, but perhaps with better re-
sults. This piece has been published several
times. The original edition was issued in a
beautiful form in September 1894 by Messrs
Elkin Matthews and John Lane. It is a master-
piece of the poetry which is not spontaneous.
The inspiration came from Poe through Baude-
laire. Both these poets were at that time ex-
ercising upon Oscar Wilde as strong an influence
as in another way was Balzac. In the " Harlot's

1 " The Duchess of Padua " was revived earl^r this jrear in
Berlin. It was killed by the critics, and its ill-fated per-
formance resulted in a heavy finanaal loss to the devoted
Meyerfeld.

«38

The Life of Oscar Wilde

House/' a poem which he wrote at the same
time, Oscar Wilde was more himself. As to the
publication of this poem we find in the ex-
cellent bibliography which is appended to the
translation of Andr6 Gide's monograph on
Wilde the following note : — " The original publi-
cation of ' The Harlot's House ' has not yet been
traced. The approximate date is known by a
parody on the poem, called ' The PubUc House/
which appeared in The Sporting Times of 13th
June 1885. In 1904 a privately printed edition,
on folio paper, with five illustrations by Althea
Gyles, was issued by the Mathurin Press, London.
In 1905 another edition was privately printed
in London, 8 pp., wrappers." It was a short
lyrical poem. The poet is standing in the street
outside the house of the Scarlet Woman and
looks up at the windows of which the blinds are
drawn down. It is night, and on the blinds
appear the '' silhouettes " of the dancing figures,
the '^ marionettes " within. In this poem Oscar
Wilde overcame his objection to the use of words
ending in ** ette " for which he professed a real
artistic horror. The last lines of the poem in
which he speaks of the dawn fleeing down the
street like a frightened girl are very beautiful.
Perhaps the tone of the whole thing, Uke that
of " The Sphynx," is not " robust," but, as we

239

The Life of Oscar Wilde

have said^ Oscar Wilde was then impregnated
with the essence of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai.
To those who came to know him intimately
in those dzys in Paris he appeared one of the
most gifted as also one of the best of men. He
was then in the height of his intellectual powers.
The fiend of his insanity never betrayed its
presence by the faintest indication. His refine-
ment and chastity of speech and Ufe seemed to
show how well he had schooled himself in the
example of the great artist whom he had set up
above him as his master. He was the most
delightful companion that a man could meet.
More than personal magnetism emanated from
his joyous personality. Men used to wonder
what this quality was in him that seemed to
stimulate in those who came near him every
desirable faculty. To-day, when the scientists
speak of radio-activity, men might wonder
whether in human beings also this principle did
not exist so that such men as possess this quality
can as readily affect those who approach them as
substances which are brought into the proximity
of radium are affected. A distinguished man
was heard to wonder whether there be not sexes
of the intellect. " Most men would then appear
to have female intellects ; the very rare, the
geniuses, having male intellects. From the con-

240

The Life of Oscar Wilde

tact of the two, great thoughts spring off. I
know/' he added '* that my brain never seems
to live nor to be so fertile as it does when I am
in the company of Oscar Wilde." His geniality
was another trait that endeared him to all who
saw him in private life. His joyousness of life
was as exhilarating as a draught of generous
wine. He seemed a happy man. His happiness
made others feel the folly of despondency and
pessimism. His gratitude to his Maker for his
creation was revealed in the intense delight he
took in every little thing that is good and
pleasant in the world. As to his morality we
read in " The Story of an Unhappy Friendship.'*
" The example of his purity of life iji such a city
as Paris, of his absolute decency of language, of
his conversation, in which never an improper
suggestion intruded, the elegance and refinement
which endowed him, would have compelled even
the most perverse and dissolute to some re-
straint. The companionship of Oscar Wilde, in
the days in which I lived in his intimacy, would
have made a gentleman, at least outwardly, of a
man of bad morals and unclean tongue."

He used to live in great luxury, dining every

evening, when he had money, at the most

fashionable Parisian restaurants. He preferred

Bignon's in the Avenue de rOp6ra, but he some-

Q 341

The Life of Oscar Wilde

times went to the Caf6 de Paris, which was quite
9s expensive, or, when he felt inclined for the
Latin Quarter, to Foyot's or to Lavenue's. At
this last place he used to meet John Sargent the
painter, and Paul Bourget ; and in the albimi at
that caf^ John Sargent one day sketched his
portrait with that of Bourget and another friend.
With Bourget he had some relationship, and the
two used frequently to meet at the Caf6 d'Orsay,
which has long since disappeared. Although
Bourget has never written anj^hing about Wilde
it was obvious in those days that he was
impressed by the man's genius ; his constant
deference and the things which he said about
him were proof of that.

He was not always prosperous. The funds
which he had brought with him from America,
not a large amount, had been exhausted ; his
work produced nothing, and his expenses were
heavy. His resources during that period in
Paris were derived from the final disposal of his
property in Ireland. There was a small estate
called the Red Island which at that time was
being melted into gold. There were times when
he was very pressed for money, when the fashion-
able restaurants had to be abandoned. During
these periods he used to take his meals in his
hotel, and it was at his hotel that with no

242

The Life of Oscar Wilde

splendour he was forced to entertain the poet^
Rollinat^ for whose book ** La Main de Tropp-
mann '' he professed a great admiration. The
macabre was then greatly preoccup3dng his mind^
but that it never corrupted his bounding optim-
ism his whole subsequent career establishes.

Mary Anderson's refusal of the '' Duchess of
Padua " was a great disappointment to him. He
had hoped from the proceeds of that play to be
able to continue his luxurious life of literary
activity in Paris. But, as there was nothing to
be looked for from this soiurce, and as the lawyers
in Ireland declared it impossible to squeeze any
more gold out of the barren acres of the Red
Island, the Paris days had to be brought to an
end. He returned to England in the summer of
1883 under the necessity of finding a means of
gaining his livelihood. An important journal
then published an article concerning his position,
achievements and prospects, the tone of which
is best explained by the title under which it
appeared : " Exit Oscar." Edmund Yates re-
butted this article in the next number of The
World, and said that in any case Oscar's exit
was a very briUiant one after the great artistic
and social successes which he had enjoyed in
Paris. The fact was, however, that his position
at that time was a very difiicult one. Yet with

The Life of Oscar Wilde

great courage and a never-failing dignity he faced
the situation^ and, in the event, came through
it triumphantly. An American firm of lecture-
agents which had a branch in London approached
him immediately on his retmn to London and,
having no option in the matter, he came to terms
with them. It was under their auspices that he
lectured one afternoon in the Prince's Hall,
Piccadilly, before a moderate audience. He was
at that time living in two small rooms at the
top of a house in Charles Street, Grosvenor
Square. To outward appearance he was very
prosperous, and must have continued to stir the
gall of the envious. He smoked Parascho
cigarettes, and was sometimes to be seen dining
in the grill-room of the Caf6 Royal with Whistler.
But the meal was ever a frugal one, and the wine
which accompanied the modest grill was slways
a claret chosen from the very top of the Ust.

«44

CHAPTER XI

Oicar Wilde oq the Lecture-Platform — His Provincial Audi-
ences— ^What the People hoped to see — ^What they saw —
And heard — Two Pen Pictures by Provincials — ^How
Psople of Refinement considered him — ^The Opinion of a
Distinguished Woman — Oscar Wilde released from this
Penance — ^His Marriage with Constance Lloyd — ^The Ex-
traordinary Wedding — ^Dresses — ^The Foreboding of Cer-
tain—Oscar Wilde's New Home— His Straightened Cir-
cumstances— Some Fine Writings — ^His Failure as a
Lecturer— The Dublin Rasoo — ^A Ptophet in his own
Country— The Caution of Th$ Fr§mmm*s Joumal-^Tbib
Wildes* P&verty— His Two Sons.

Immediately after the lecture in the Prince's
Hall Oscar Wilde commenced to visit various
provincial towns in different parts of the kingdom
to give his address on " The House Beautiful/'
under a contract with a firm of lecture-agents.
The labour was not distasteftil to him^ and the
fees earned in this way were at that time his sole
resource. He was so poor in the autumn of 1883
that he was frequently obUged to have recourse
to the pawnbrokers^ and just before his first
lecture in London, a friend accompanied him to
Marlborough Street Police Court to swear to the
loss of a pawn-ticket before the magistrate. The
same friend remembers a day, at about the

»4S

The Life of Oscar Wilde

same time^ when he was entirely devoid of funds,
and for once, at least, could have written himself
down, impransus, as he retired to bed. Under
no other drciunstances would he have brought
himself to associate his name with the enterprise
of those provincial lectures, so clear was it made
to him that its success was expected not from
the value and the interest of the address, but
from the notoriety attaching to his name as the
eccentric " aesthete/' The great majority of the
people who came to his lectures paid the en-
trance fee with no other purpose than to stare
at the man who was reported to have a strange
passion for sunflowers and liUes. Everybody
had heard of " the aesthetic movement," very
few even knew the meaning of the adjective.

It was to imbeciles of this calibre that this
scholar was forced by his necessity to discourse.
His lectures were not successful in any degree,
nor can the speculation have been a very pro-
fitable one to the agents who had engaged upon
it. People were vastly disappointed to find that
his appearance, dresS, and manners were no
different from those of any gentleman. The ad-
vertisements of these lectures which appeared in
some provincial town were calculated to arouse
the highest expectations of the morbidly curious.
A show was promised ; the subject-matter of the

246

The Life of Oscar Wilde

lecture was not referred to. On certain news-
paper files in different parts of the country one
may still read display advertisements^ running
down whole columns, after some such fashion
of vulgarity as this : —

HE IS COMING!!!
HE IS COMING!!!
HE IS COMING!!!

WHO IS COMING???
WHO IS COMING???
WHO IS COMING???

OSCAR WILDE!!!
OSCAR WILDE!!!
OSCAR WILDE!!!

THE GREAT ^ESTHETE!!!
THE GREAT ^ESTHETE!!!
THE GREAT iESTHETE!!!

It was in this way that it was brought to the
public notice that a gentleman of rare scholarship
and great erudition designed to address a
meeting on a subject on which, at least, from a
careful study of its masters and extensive reading
and observation he was adequately quaUfied to
speak. One day in Charles Street one of his
friends picked up a provincial newspaper which

247

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was lying on his table. Oscar Wilde, whose
manners were always gentle and urbane, flushed
red, and violently snatched it from his hands.
" Do not look at that ! " he cried, crushing the
paper up and flinging the ball into the fire. His
friend, had, however, noticed an advertisement
similar in tone to the one of which a part is
given above. Nobody felt more keenly the de-
gradation of these exhibitions than the potential
author of " The Soul of Man Under Socialism *'
himself. Although his want of money was
pressing at this time he indignantly refused to
appear in " aesthetic costimie," in spite of the
fact that for such an additional attraction a
much higher fee would have been paid to him.
In view of his refusal the agents, who were well
aware that it was the person of Oscar Wilde
and not at all what he might have to say about
beautiful houses that would attract the sight-
seers of the provinces, were obliged to conceal
the fact that no spectacle was to be afforded.
The references to '* the great aesthete " in the
advertisements contained the suggestion that
something laughable was to be on exhibition^
and when the audience discovered that instead
of watching the antics, and listening to the
patter, of a buffoon, they were expected to lend
ear to a disquisition deUvered by a scholar which

248

The Life of Oscar Wilde

invited their minds to ascend to a plane of in-
accessible height they were not slow to express
their disappointment and disapproval. On
several occasions the room emptied itself during
the progress of the lecture.

It will be of interest to put on record here — ^in
spite of the vulgarity of their style — two pen-
pictures of him drawn at the time in different
places by two provincial journalists^ for they will
show first what the audience had expected to
see, and secondly how they were impressed by
his appearance and delivery. They are repre-
sentative of opinions expressed throughout the
coimtry.

This is the first : —

" We were informed by the advertisement pamphlet that
this gentleman has, since the publication of his book of poems
in 1890, devoted his time to public addresses. So, as poets
do not often come before the public personally, we were
naturally anxious to see what a poet-lecturer was like. With
imaginary visions of celebrated poets in mind we were
anxiously awaiting the appearance of Mr Wilde upon the plat-
form, when the curtain was drawn asunder, and in walked
not a Tennyson, but a Long-fellow. For the first quart d^heure
we could not erase the impression from our minds that the
subject of the lecture was not ' the house beautiful,' but ' the
man beautified.' This cheveux de frise — ^he gets very warm
on the subject of friezes — ^proved at a glance how highly the
lecturer estimated the power of capillary attraction, for his
head seemed surrounded with a perfect halo of artificially-
arrayed curls, which, if removable, would doubtless fetch a
figurative sum at an auction sale as a most admirable substitute
for a lady's bonnet. Joking apart, no gentleman would con-
tradict a lady who said that Mr Wilde could rejoice in the

249

The Life of Oscar Wilde

pofisession of a hairy haad wliich at once stamps him as a
master of artistic decoration. His collar had evidently been
made to an original design, which has no doubt been deposited
at South Kensington and the pattern patented, or it must have
been in the market long ago. His necktie was neither tied
nor untied, but, like the clerical collar, puzded one to know
where it b^^ and how it ended. His cu& were equaDy
aesthetic and ' took one by the collar.' Mr Wilde's theory
as to the harmonious arrangement of colours in art decoratum
is that our backgrounds should consist of tertiary or neutral
tints, relieved by small objects or ornaments of rich primary
colour or bright appearance. The man beautified was accord-
ingly arrayed in the neutral tints of black and white, with the
rich relief in the shape of ared silk handkerchief peeping out
from the left side of his vest, and a massive watch-chain
pendant, which appeared like the name-label on a bunch of
keys, inasmuch as no one else had one just like it. In (not on)
those marvellous members of the human body, the hands,
were held a pair of white silk gloves, which if the owner did not
know to be useful at all events feii to be beautiful. Tall and
graceful, and presenting a youthful appearance, he delivers
his lecture with dear, distinct articulation, never hesitating
for a word, nor striving after flights of eloquence, but handling
his subject with an amount of assurance and self-possession
that gives you the impression that he must be quite as high
an authority as Morris or Ruskin, whom he quotes to agree or
disagree with. . . . The closing part of his lecture on art
education drew forth repeated applause, and, in fact, the whi^
of it was sufficiently interesting to gain for him unbroken
attention during the hour and a half which his lecture occupied.**

This is how the second provincial journalist
wrote : —

" Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetic — ^the ine&ble — ^the exponent
of the principle of eternal loveliness has visited us and is —
human. He is not an angd after alll Nor is he a deity
springing to us out of the dark past. His food must have
been other than the nectar'd sweets the poets love to write
about ; in fact he can be sem, and heard, and handled, lor
he is a — ^man. This revelation will come as an unwdoome
surprise to many. One so delightfully out of S3rmpathy with

350

The Life of Oscar Wilde

tkm age, with such ineffable yearnings towazds the romantic
past, with such inexpresable aspirations towards the beauteous
future, when the essential ugliness of to-day shall only be re-
membered as a hideous dream, such a man cannot be-— ought
not to be— one of us. So I am sure many think. I believe
it was Mrs Browning who describes how sad we feel when we
find our cherished idols simply to be day ; but I can confess
to no such revelation of feeling when Mr Oscar Wilde stepped
cm to the platform and I discovered he had no wings. Mr
Oscar Wilde is tall, well-proportioned, with a poet's hair, and
— shall I say it — a mildly epicurean countenance. In his
appearance there was nothing Byronic, or Bulwerian, or
Carlylean, or Ruskinesque ; a little that savoured of Count
d'Orsay, Beau Brummel, and more that suggested the tradi-
tional diner-out. His dress had few peculiarities, being
ordinary evening-dress, a very wilderness of shirt-front, re-
tieved by a half-concealed scarlet handkerchief, deftly placed
inside his vest. His pose and manner might have been artistic,
but were not particularly effective. His voice is a moderately
pleasing one, with an occasional lisp to give it an aristocratic
tone. His action — ^what little there was of it — ^was striking.
He spoke entirely extempore, not even availing himself of the
use of notes. For very much more than an hour he addressed
his audience. There was no hesitation, and there was no
fire. Only once there was an approach to pathos, and as far
as I could detect only one quotation from the poets, excepting
an extract he gave in the form of a letter — I think-— of John
Keats. He came to speak to us on an important subject.
And here I must say, that if his lecture had been called the
' Home Beautiful,' instead of the ' House Beautiful,' I should
have been better pleased. Englishmen — especially such as
would go and hear such a discourse as Oscar Wilde's — do not
care much for their " houses," they care everything for their
homes. An Englishman never says he is going to his ' house,^
but always that he is going ' home.' A house to an English-
man is an empty building. The same building filled with
furniture, and all sorts of lovely things — ^plus wife and children
— becomes a home."

On people of refinement the impression pro-
duced was, of course, a different one. Many

25»

The Life of Oscar WUde

people in many parts of the country remembering
him as he appeared to them twenty-two years
ago speak regretfully of his fate. Over women
his personality seems to have exercised a great
influence. " I can remember him/' writes a
lady of refinement and culture from a Midland
town, " as though I had seen him yesterday. My
mother was delighted with his appearance ; she
often afterwards spoke of his hair and his hands
and his tie — oh ! his tie, how it impressed us all.
For my part, though I was only a girl then, I
felt he was saying things which nobody present
could understand, and it seemed to me at times
as though he knew it also. I felt it was a pity
he should have had to come here at all, for I
suppose it was necessity that drove him on to the
lecture-platform. Many of the things he said
have remained familiar in my mind ever since.
I never see a big curtain-pole without thinking
of what he said about the sins of the upholsterer,
and I know that I never drink a cup of tea at a
railway refreshment-room without remembering
how he described the cup out of which he drank
his coffee at the hotel in San Francisco, where
he contrasted the crockery of the Chinese in the
Chinese quarter of that city, with the domestic
vessels used by the Europeans. It was a real
distress to me to sit in that lecture-room

as*

The Life of Oscar Wilde

lookiiig at this wonderful youth and listemng to
his profound and beautiful words, while the rest
of the audience were either gazing with dismay
and surprise, or showing how bored they were.
The room was not half-full to begin with, and
during the whole course of the lecture people
kept getting up and going out. But he seemed
quite indifferent to the mood of his audience,
his mamier, if I may use the term in such a
connection, was quite business-Uke. It was as if
he was saying to himself, ' I am here to say cer-
tain things, and I shall go on speaking until I
have said them/ He began speaking the
moment he came on the stage, and when he had
said his last word he walked o£E as if anxious
to catch a train and get away from us all.''

Those amongst his provincial audiences who
listened to him, and who attempted to be critical,
were in the habit of saying that his weakness as
a lecturer was in a tendency to exaggeration.
Some Joseph Prud'homme of the provinces
sagely remarked: ''He pronounces as dicta,
with the authority of an oracle, principles which
are essentially debateable.'*

The most favourite criticism, however, of Oscar
Mode's lecture on " The House Beautiful " — a
criticism which can be found in similar phrase-
ology in contemporary prints all over the

«S3

The Life of Oscar Wilde

country, and not in the provinces alone — was
to the effect that : " Mr Oscar Wilde seems to
ignore the deeply-rooted prejudice that aestheti-
dsm if not symboUc of weakness and effeminacy^
is, at least, the antithesis of that moral and in-
tellectual robustness which we, in this age, are
accustomed to respect."

From this bondage, from these chains, which
to such an artist must have been galling indeed,
Oscar Wilde was to be rescued by the gentle and
beautiftd Constance Lloyd. To her for some
time past he had been paying attentions ; it was
during the course of his lecture-tour that he was
able to visit DubUn and ask her to become his
wife. Constance Lloyd admired him and loved
him ; she put her hand into his. She was
wealthily connected ; she was assured of a good
income on her marriage by her grandfather, who
had instituted her to be his heiress. The
marriage took place on the 29th of May 1884 ;
we find the following announcement of it in The
Times for 31st May : " On 29th May, at St
James's Church, Paddington, by the Rev. Walter
Abbott, Vicar, Oscar, younger son of the late
Sir Wilham Wilde, M.D., of Dublin, to Constance
Mary, only daughter of the late Horace Lloyd,
Esq. Q.C." Edmund Yates gave a friendly
notice of the occurrence in The World for 4th

^54

The Life of Oscar Wilde

June 1884 : — " Mr Oscar Wilde's wedding went
o£f with more simple effect than the large crowd
who thronged the chm*ch had possibly come out
to see. Owing to the illness of Mr John Horatio
Lloyd, the bride's grandfather, the ceremony
was meant to be of rather a private character,
and only the near relatives were asked to meet
at Lancaster Gate after the service. There is
only this much to be recorded about it : that
the bride, accompanied by her six pretty brides-
maids, looked charming ; that Oscar bore him-
self with calm dignity ; and that all most intim-
ately concerned in the affair seemed thoroughly
pleased. A happy Uttle group of intitnes
saw them off at Charing Cross." Yet the
baroque and the bizarre were not wanting in
this wedding which sealed a union which was
to end in such unhappiness. It appeared that
Oscar Wilde felt it incumbent on him as a
" Professor of Esthetics " to give such directions
as to the dresses of his bride and bridesmaids
as might impress the onlookers with the fact
that it was no ordinary wedding that they were
attending. A brief description of these dresses
will establish this suggestion. '' The bride's
rich creamy satin dress was of a deUcate cowslip
tint ; the bodice, cut square and somewhat low
in front, was finished with a high Medici collar ;

«S5

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the ample sleeves were puffed ; the skirt, made
plain, was gathered by a silver girdle of beautiful
workmanship, the gift of Mr Oscar Wilde ; the
veil of saffron-coloured Indian silk gauze was
embroidered with pearls and worn in Marie
Stuart fashion ; a thick wreath of m5n^e leaves,
through which gleamed a few white blossoms,
crowned her fair frizzed hair ; the dress was
ornamented with clusters of m3nlle leaves ; the
large bouquet had as much green in it as white.
The six bridesmaids were cousins of the bride.
Two dainty Uttle figures, that seemed to have
stepped out of a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
led the way. They were dressed in quaintly-
made gowns of Surah silk, the colour of a ripe
gooseberry ; large pale yellow sashes round their
waist ; the skirts faUing in straight folds to the
ankles displayed small bronze, high-heeled shoes.
Large red silk Gainsborough hats decked with
red and yellow feathers shaded the damsels'
golden hair ; amber necklaces, long yellow
gloves, a cluster of yellow roses at their throats,
a bouquet of white liUes in their hands, com-
pleted the attire of the tiny bridesmaids. The
four elder bridesmaids wore skirts of the same
red Surah silk, with over-dresses of pale blue
tnousseline de laine, the bodices made long and
pointed; high crowned hats trinuned with

2S6

Pholo ly Eischgilz,

1 6, THE STREET.

f^agc 257,

The Life of Oscar Wilde

cream-coloured feathers and red knots of ribbon,
lilies in their hands, amber necklaces and yeUow
roses at their throats made up a sufficiently
picturesque ensemble. One of the ladies present
wore what was described as a " very aesthetic
costume." It was composed of " an under-
dress of rich red silk with a sleeveless smock of
red plush, a hat of white lace trimmed with
clusters of red roses imder the brim and roimd
the crown." This gaudy and displeasing picture
must be recalled. It proves as nothing else
could prove the entire confidence of Constance
Lloyd in the artistic pretensions of her husband.
No woman who was not bUndly convinced
of the superiority of her bridegroom's taste
would have consented to such a masquerade.
It may have occurred to some of the on-
lookers that a tmion so initiated could not
contain the elements of happiness. Where
the woman is entirely h3q)notised and sub-
jugated her marriage is not often a happy one
for her.

On the day of his wedding Oscar Wilde took
his yoimg wife over to Paris, and the first weeks
of the honeymoon were spent in that city. They
occupied a suite of rooms at the Hotel Wagram
in the rue de RivoU. They both seemed to be
radiantly happy. Oscar was a gallant and de-
» «S7

The Life of Oscar Wilde

voted husband^ and Constance seemed to be
swathed in rapturous delight. If ever her
husband left her alone to go out with any friend,
a few minutes after his departure a messenger
would arrive at the hotel bearing for the bride
a bouquet of exquisite flowers together with a
note couched in language of such impassioned
adoration that it charmed her soUtude and made
her happy even though her loved one was away.
Mrs Wilde's dowry enabled the young couple
to take the lease of a good house in Tite Street,
Chelsea, which was the last home of his own
that Oscar was to possess. It was decorated
under the direction of Whistler, and was sub-
stantially furnished. At the very top of the
house a work-room had been installed for Oscar
Wilde, the furniture of which was painted red.
But he never used this room. The Uttle writing
that he ever did at home was done in a small
study which was to the right of the entrance
passage. Mrs Wilde's income at that time was
not large — she did not come into her grand-
father's fortune until much later, and it became
immediately necessary for Oscar to find re-
munerative employment. He turned to jouma-
Usm for U velihood, «and he accepted occasional
engagements on the lecture-platform. He was
a constant contributor of anon}anous work to

«S8

The Life of Oscar Wilde

The World and The Pall Mall Gazette. Much of
his writings at this time have been traced, and
were recently being hawked round the London
publishing-houses by speculators in his notoriety.
It was a disservice to his reputation, it would
appear, which would concern these Uterary re-
surrection-men but little. The work was poor ;
it was the hack-work, currente calamo, of a man
who had no heart in his labours ; and " poorer
stuff,'' said one London publisher to whom this
volume was offered, *' I never read in my life."
Yet at the same time he was writing those ex-
quisite fairy-stories, which were afterwards re-
published in a volume by David Nutt. " The
Happy Prince and Other Tales '* (1888) ; a volume
which many of his admirers look upon as his
best and most characteristic prose work. There
are no fairy-stories in the English language to
compare with them. The writing is quite
masterly; the stories proceed from a rare and
opulent imagination; and while the tales that
are told interest the child no less than the man
of the worid there underUes the whole a subtle
philosophy, an indictment of society, a plea for
the disinherited, which make of this book and
of the " House of Pomegranates " (1891) two
veritable requisitoires against the social S3^tem,
as crushing as '' The Soul of Man/' And yet

«59

The Life of Oscar Wilde

as one reads these tales the lesson that the
author wishes to teach never forces itself upon
him. Unlike Lewis CarroU and Hans Andersen
Oscar Wilde tells a story which a child can read
with pleasure and interest, and without that un-
comfortable feeling that moral medicine is being
administered to him in Uterary preserves. If
Oscar Wilde had had hopes that the lecture-
platform would afford a source of income to
him he was doomed to disappointment. In
January 1885 he deUvered at the Gaiety,
DubUn, under the management of Mr Michael
Gunn, two afternoon lectures. The first, given on
the afternoon of Monday, 5th January, was on
"Dress" (Beauty — ^Taste — Ugliness in Dress);
and the second, on Tuesday, treated of "The
Value of Art in Modem Life." Of both these
lectures a resume appears at the end of this
volxune. The enterprise was a disastrous failure.
DubUn was indifferent to the son of Speranza,
indifferent to the son of Sir WiUiam Wilde, in-
different to the briUiant Trinity College man
who had so distinguished himself and his country
at Oxford, and to the poet and lecturer who had
set two worlds talking. We find in The Free-
man's Journal for 6th January the following
prefatory remarks to its notice of the lecture on
" Dress '' :—

s6o

The Life of Oscar WUde

" Although the fact of the lecture takmg place
was fully announced for da)^ in advance the
attendance was hardly satisfactory. At most^
about 500 persons were present, chiefly in the
dress circle and stalls. But the audience though
not large was highly inteUigent, critical and
appreciative of the matter and style of the
lecturer. Evidently people have ceased to re-
gard Mr Wilde as the eccentric apostle of a
momentarily fashionable craze, to be seen, heard
and laughed at."

A highly appreciative account of the lecture
followed, but that afternoon the attendance was
very much smaller. Possibly the high prices
charged for admission frightened the pubUc. Mr
Gunn was asking 21s., 30s., and 42s. for private
boxes, and proportionate prices for the rest of the
house. At that time nuUin/e performances of
a pantomime were being given at the Gaiety,
and it is related that a gentleman accompanied
by two boys came by mistake into the theatre,
sat down and listened patiently for some time
to Oscar's discourse, and finally got up ex-
claiming: "What's aU this? When's the
pantomime going to begin ? " In the following
month there appeared in The Dublin University
Review, of all publications the one in which the
greatest deference ought to have been paid to

s6i

The Life of Oscar Wilde

the Berkeley Medallist^ son of Sir \^lliam Wilde^
and a frequent contributor to its pages, two
sarcastic and cutting notices of his lecture.
These are they : —

" We confess that before a visit to the Gaiety
Theatre dispelled the illusion we had thought
that the re-appearance of Mr Oscar Wilde before
a DubUn audience would have excited, very
general interest among his fellow-dtizens. In-
deed, in spite of the fact that Mr Wilde, like
the elephant Jumbo, with whose notoriety his
popularity was contemporaneous, has ceased to
attract the sympathy and the shillings of the
pubUc, we feel bound to express our belief of
the talents of that gentleman, and our regret
that they have not latterly been more usefully
employed. The indifference with which the
lecturer was received cannot fairly be ascribed
to any faUing oi! in the quality of the lectures,
which formed not only a complete exposition
of Mr Wilde's pecuhar philosophy of art, but
were in themselves instructive and suggestive.
However, a few more lectures as unfortunate,
from a commercial point of view, as those re-
cently deUvered in this dty will materially
remedy this defect, and will help to restore
Mr Wilde to pubUc favour. Meanwhile he will
not regret the decrease on his receipts, for as

26a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

he stated in his second lecture : ' True Art is
economical/ "

In the same number of the official organ of
T.C.D. appears a letter on Sir Noel Paton's
picture " Lux in Tenebris." " It is pretty
enough/' says the writer, "but it no more
realises the idea of a spiritual light shining in the
moral darkness of the world than would, let us
say, a picture of Mr Oscar Wilde preaching about
dress-improvers at the Gaiety.'*

This was Dublin's salute to the most talented
man to whom she had ever given birth. For
the rest, although in Ireland one finds little of
that horror against the mention of Oscar Wilde's
name which still lingers in England, in certain
quarters, where one would least expect to find
it, it persists. In the summer of last year a
gentleman being desirous of purchasing a photo-
graph of Oscar Wilde as a child, and of getting
information as to the early life of Speranza, sent
an advertisement embodying his requirements
to The Freeman* $ Journal, where, if anywhere in
Ireland, Lady Wilde's memory ought to have
been revered. The advertisement was eventu-
ally inserted, but not for several days, during
which the manager was communicating with the
editor — ^the acting-editor not having dared to
assume so grave a responsibility — as to whether

263

The Life of Oscar Wilde

an advertisement referring to Lady Wilde and
her son could be allowed to appear in the journal !
Mr Whistler's attack on Oscar Wilde — ^the de-
tails of which can be found set out in " The Gentle
Art of Making Enemies " — did much to reduce
still lower any chances of success as a lecturer
which remained to Oscar Wilde. Whistler made
it public that Oscar Wilde's lecture on the English
Renaissance was mainly made up from facts and
opinions which he, Whistler, had supplied to the
lecturer. It would have been just as easy for
that admirable actor, Hermann Vezin, to have
rushed into print and to have declared that
Oscar's manner on the stage was the result of
some training in elocution and gesture which he
had given him before he commenced his lecture-
tour. But then Hermann Vezin is not only a
great artist, he is a true and loyal friend.
This source of income having failed there were
periods of real poverty in the elegant house in
Tite Street. A lady who hved near the Wildes
has recorded that at that time she was frequently
called upon by Mrs Wilde to lend her money,
even small sums such as the purchase of a pair
of boots might demand. At the same time the
expenses of the manage were increasing. In June
1885 and again in November 1886 a son was
bom to them. Stray writings for the papers,

264

The Life of Oscar WUde

and an occasional signed contribution to the
reviews could not produce the income which
was necessary to supplement the wife's allow-
ance, and in the end Oscar Wilde turned to
journalism for a living for himself and his
family.

a6s

CHAPTER XII

Oscar Vfilde in Fleet Street— Editor of The Woman's Worid^
Pegasus in the Plough — His Loyalty to his Employers —
The Industrious Apprentice — ^Lady Wilde and Constance
Wilde as Contributors — ^A Severe Editor — A Kindly
Critic — His List of Contributors — His Later Attacks on
Journalists — The Possible Explanation of this Attitude —
His Consistency in the Matter— Oscar Wilde and Af 'dur^f
Magadna — Oscar Wilde and Lb Journal — Ifis Contribu-
tions to The Daily CkromcU—Tke Disinterestedness of
this Work.

It was at this time in his career that he came
to be seen, periodically, in that Fleet Street of
which, afterwards, he was to speak with such
acerbity and contempt.

A firm of publishers of Ludgate HiU — ^the
Messrs Cassell & Co. — had come to the conclusion
that his reputation as a leader of fashion and an
arbiter of the elegancies might be turned to pro-
fitable account on behalf of a certain monthly
publication, issued from their printing-presses,
which at that time enjoyed no high degree of
public favour. The beUef was held in La Belle
Sauvage Yard that the name of Oscar Wilde
printed in large letters upon the cover of this
magazine — to be styled afresh : The Woman* s

266

The Life of Oscar Wilde

World — would attract the attention and the
custom also of the fashionable women to whom
it was supposed to appeal^ bringing in the train
of their patronage that multitude of purchasers^
who ensiire commercial success. In this beUef
these printers proposed to him the direction of
The Woman* s World: the terms offered were
what in his straitened circumstances, with the
fresh charges upon him, he could not with
prudence refuse, and the bargain was struck.
If, after a prolonged test, the adventure did not
result in satisfaction, it was not because the new
editor failed in vigilance or assiduity, but be-
cause London society, in the sense of fashionable
people, had not yet come under the sway of his
influence. His connection with The Woman^s
World lasted from October 1887 to September
1889.

The amusing spectacle was thus afforded
during this period, of a scholar, a critic, an artist
acting as overseer and salesman of such pro-
ductions of the pen as treat of the chatter of the
shops, the commonplaces of tiring-room and
pantry, the futiUties of changing modes. '' Are
Servants a Failure?" "Fancy Dresses for
Children," "Typewriting and Shorthand for
Women," are the titles of some of the papers
for which the future author of " The Soul of Man

267

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Under Socialism " and of " De Profundis " had
to arrange^ of which when written to approve,
and which he had to send out to the world
under his imprimatur. The history of the for-
lorn makeshifts and expedients to which neces-
sity often constrains the most gifted men of
letters affords no example more apposite than
this part of Oscar Wilde's Ufe. It reminds one
of the experiences of Charles Baudelaire^ the
poet^ when a committee of French provincial
shareholders had brought him away from Paris,
from the writing of the Fleurs du Mai and the
translating of Edgar Allan Poe, to edit a local
paper. If Charles Baudelaire, however, failed
from the very outset, because he despised his
work and approached his task in that spirit, it
must be said of the Irish poet-editor that he
very earnestly did his best for his employers.
An apprentice to journalism, he displayed all
those qualities of industry, punctuality, and
ardour which, as Hogarth would have us beUeve,
lead men to high honours and great wealth in
the city of London. It was in the irony of
things that a career thus entered upon should
have led him, if not to Tyburn, at least to the
Old Bailey and the Bankruptcy Court.

Baudelaire's first inquiry on entering the
office of the provincial newspaper which he was

268

The Life of Oscar Wilde

to publish^ was as to where the ''editorial brandy-
bottle " Mras kept. Wilde, was, perhaps, even
more a slave to the nicotine habit, than
Baudelaire, to alcohol, yet he very cheerfully
accommodated himself to the strict rule im-
posed by Messrs Cassell & Co., that no smoking
is allowed, under any pretext, in any part of
their buildings. He seemed to take real pleasure
in the hours which he spent in La Belle Sauvage
Yard, because of the opportxmities which were
there afforded him of meeting Wemyss Reid, the
editor of The Speaker, a man of great scholarship
and refinement, for whom he had a great ad-
miration. He used to take the underground
railway from Sloane Square to Charing Cross,
and thence walk up the Strand and Fleet Street
to his office. The days had not yet come when
he could declare that " he never walked." He
was always dressed with elegance and care,
presenting in his appearance a strong contrast
to the types which are sometimes to be seen in
that part of London. His regularity was at that
time remarked upon. He was, no doubt, making
a strong effort to subject himself to discipline.
At the same time, no doubt, the interest and
dignity of his position appealed to his histrionic
nature. He walked, an editor, amongst the
proletarians of the press. He had the satis-

969

The Life of Oscar Wilde

faction of showing that the part of jotimalist
could be dressed by the tailors of Bond Street,
the hatters and glovers of Piccadilly^ and adorned
by the florists of the Burlington Arcade — ^at a
time, too, when he was, perhaps, one of the
very poorest editors in London.

It appeared to his friends, at times, that he
enjoyed the dignity, as well the meagre patronage
of his editorial office. He was once heard to
say, with some pride in his tones, speaking of his
power of remunerating contributors : " I pay a
guinea a page, no matter if most of the space is
occupied by illustrations or not." That he had
the interests of his employer at heart was shown
by the fact that he never allowed feeUngs of
friendship to interfere with the impartial per-
formance of his duty as an editor. He was
frequently applied to for commissions by needy
Bohemian acquaintances, but where he con-
sidered that a man was not fitted to write for
his periodical, he told him so. Lady Wilde and
his wife contributed one or two articles each to
The Woman's World during Oscar Wilde's editor-
ship, but in every case the article on its own
merits was well worthy of acceptance, and would
have earned the fee paid from any editor in
London. In the volume for 1889 we find from
Lady Wilde's pen a collection of ** Irish Peasant

The Life of Oscar WUde

Tales." There are five of these tales, " A Night
with the Fairies," " A L^end of Shark," " Fairy
Help," " The Western Isles," and " St Patrick
and the Witch."

G>nstance Wilde's contribution during this
year to the magazine of which her husband was
editor is an illustrated, well " documented "
paper on "Mu£k," a good specimen of the
** Museum-made " article.

It may be said that since the magistrate,
Brillat-Savarin, wrote his "Physiologie du Goftt,"
and showed that a cookery-book can be made
a work of literary art, never has Uterary skill
been put in stranger fashion at the service of the
cx>mmonplaces of domestic life than appears in
the pages of The WomatCs World under Oscar
Wilde's editorship. " Que diable allait-elle faire
dans cette galore ? " might be asked of Uterature.
The magazine was too admirable to succeed.
Its style was too refined for the people to whom
the subjects treated of appealed, and those people
who might have deUghted in the style were kept
aloof by the subjects.

Oscar Wilde's personal contributions to this
periodical — apart from certain articles on special
literary subjects — ^took the form of a monthly
causcrie, published under the title of ''Some
Literary Notes." Considerable care and in*

971

The Life of Oscar Wilde

dustry were expended by the editor on these
articles. They usually occupied five pages of
The Woman's Worlds and were quite the most
interesting literary criticism then appearing in
London. But what student of contemporary
Uterature was going to himt out these " literary
notes " between an article on " The Gymnasium
for Girls/' by Mrs L. Ormiston Chanty and a
paper on '* Field-Work for Women/' by Ouida.

Oscar Wilde's criticisms are always kindly^
and full of instruction, which is just what criti-
cism, if it is to have any value, should be.
These pages are filled with dicta and epigram on
the art of Uterature, which no future compiler
of a complete edition of his works should fail to
collect.

In the important matter of obtaining the
services of distinguished people as contributors
to his magazine, without possessing a free hand
in fixing the scale of remuneration, Wilde was
remarkably successful. During the first six
months of i8^ he obtained for The Woman's
World contributions from Oscar Browning, E.
Nesbit, Annie Thomas, Ella Hepworth Dixon,
Amy Levy, Ouida, Carmen Sylva, Blanche
Roosevelt, the G)untess of Portsmouth, St
HeUers, Gleeson White, Miss OUve Schreiner,
Lady Sandhiu:st, Miss F. L. Shaw, Miss Marie

273

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Corelli^ Arthur Symons, and Mrs Crawford.
Marie Corelli's contribution was a long article
on Shakespeare's mother, which at the present
rates in the literary RiaUo could probably be
disposed of by an efficient agent for twenty times
the amount which the editor of The Woman's
World was enabled to offer.

It should be added that Oscar Wilde was an
editor whom it was not easy to please. He
would tolerate no slovenliness of writing. In
the matter, for instance, of punctuation he was
scrupulous in the extreme. If anywhere on a
printed or manuscript page laid before him a
poor little comma had intruded where it had
no right to be, or one had deserted its post, his
flashing glance would immediately turn to the
spot. One of his stories was that his hostess
in a country house having asked him at dinner
how he had spent the day he had answered:
*' I have been correcting the proofs of my
poems. In the morning, after hard work, I
took a comma out of one sentence." '' And in
the afternoon ? " " In the afternoon, I put it
back again.'' He was here jesting at what was
a marked characteristic of his literary technique.

During all this time, apart from his editor-
ship, he was a frequent contributor to the
weekly and daily press, as well as to the
s 273

The Life of Oscar WUde

magazines. He wrote anonymously for The Pall
MaU Gazette, in whose columns he revealed him-
self as a brilliant paragraphist, who did not dis-
dain the piquancy of personalities ; he contri-
buted much to The World under Yates's editor-
ship; his name is to be found imder many
magazine articles which have long since been
forgotten. One remembers^ for instance^ an
article on *' London Models '' which appeared
in The English Illustrated Mc^azine (vol. vi.
1888-1889), which is a good specimen of purely
journalistic work.

It was not till a year or two later that he
began to speak with such detestation of jouma-
Usts. It is possible that it had taken him just
so long to discover that the reputations which
are made by newspapers have no real foundation
in the hearts of the people^ that interviews and
paragraphs^ and the whole gamut of periodical
puffery, although they may make a person
notorious, do not bestow upon him that popu-
larity which is associated with the substantial
benefices of fame. It is an experience which
most public men have made; and those who
have expected great results from the persistent
clamour of the journalists, do often, when dis-
appointed in these expectations, manifest ran-
cour and resentment towards those whom at an

274

The Life of Oscar Wilde

earlier date they fostered. From a very early
stage in his career Oscar Wilde had been one
of the men in England whose names were most
widely known — ^he himself once said that a
year or two after he came to London his name
was a household word throughout the coimtry —
but naturally as long as his reputation rested
alone on this foimdation he got nothing from it
but such enjoyment as vanity might thence
derive, and it is possible, what has been noticed
in many other instances, that a peevish resent-
ment arising from his disappointment prompted
him to that contumely of journalists which un-
fortunately he continued to display long after
real service to the pubUc had brought true fame
and its tangible rewards.

In the days of his own connection with the
periodical press he sometimes used to speak in
praise of certain of the characteristics of journa-
lism. After the appointment of his brother
William Wilde to the staff of The Daily Tele-
graph he was heard to say : " There is a great
fascination in journalism. It is so quick, so
swift. Willy goes to a Duchess's ball, he shps
out before midnight, is away for an hour or two,
returns, and as he is driving home in the morning,
can buy the paper containing a full account of
the party which he has just left." Like every-

•75

The Life of Oscar Wilde

body else in England he expressed the greatest
admiration for the work which his brother did
in reporting the judicial proceedings of the
Pamell commission. Yet in 1891, a bare year
after he had turned his back on Fleet Street,
he wrote that passage on British journalism
which occurs in " The Soul of Man Under
SodaUsm/' which aroused against him the
terrible hatred, suppressed at the time, which
blazed forth at the time of his fall. One extract
from this passage will suffice here. " In cen-
turies before ours the pubUc nailed the ears of
joumahsts to the pump. That was quite hid-
eous. In this century joumahsts have nailed
their own ears to the keyhole. That is much
worse.'* This vituperation of joumahsts was a
constant feature of his conversation during the
next few years. He frequently requested his
brother not to dare speak to him of his " vile
gutter friends from Fleet Street.*' He never
missed an opportunity of insulting the press in
his plays.

If there was ever any truth in the statement
which has been frequently made that at one
time in his hfe Oscar Wilde thirsted after news-
paper notoriety with the eagerness of which
certain contemporary writers afford so painful
an example, it is a fact that when '* The Ideal

376

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Husband '' was being written he had entirely
set his face against it. In January 1895 he was
approached by the Messrs M'Clure, of M^Clure^s
Magazine^ who were anxious to publish about
him an article in the form of an interview. It
should be stated that this magazine was already
at that time a great power in the United States,
and that the foremost writers and celebrities in
other walks of life in all parts of the world had
been glad to avail themselves of a publicity so
beneficial and far-reaching. The writing of this
article was to be done by one of Wilde's oldest
friends, whose name was widely known in
America in connection with work of this kind.
The request of the Messrs M'Clure was answered
by Oscar Wilde in a letter which he wrote from
Ute Street to this friend, in which he said that
he did not like the tone of his editor's letter —
that to speak of wishing for " Oscariana " was
an impertinence — ^that he understood that it was
usual that a fee should be paid to the person
interviewed, and that he would in no way assist
in the production of the article unless he first
received a cheque for £20. As at that time such
a sum was of no importance to him whatever,
and as in any other way he would have been glad
to assist his old Mend in his work, this letter
affords good proof that personal advertisement

277

The Life of Oscar Wilde

by newspaper publicity had become entirely
distasteful to him.

He was consistent in this dislike until the end.
It occurred to some of his friends who watched
him during his second Trial at the Old Bailey
that the way in which on the posters of the
newspapers his name was placarded all over
London afforded him some satisfaction, and a
remark of his on the subject is on record ; ^ but
this may be explained by that natural and
pathetic prompting that moves every poor
mortal to endeavour to find in any great personal
disaster some scrap of consolation.

In his greatest distress, at a time when he
needed money most badly, after his ruin had
been consummated, he refused the most sub-
stantial offers from the proprietors of newspapers,
and not only from those who merely wished to
trade in the notoriety of his name. After his
release from prison, while he was living in
Bemeval, it was suggested to Femaud Xau,
the proprietor of Le Journal^ one of the prin-
cipal papers in Paris, that Oscar Wilde could
write effective articles on various questions of

1 " The town was placarded with his name ; and one niEht,
alluding to this, I said : ' Well, yon have got yonr name bdore
the public at last.' He laughed, and said : ' Nobody can pre-
tend now not to have heard it. - ' Oscar Wilde. The Story
of an Unhappy Friendship ' - *

.78

The Life of Oscar Wilde

literature and art on which his authority was
uncontested. Xau agreed to place his name on
his list of contributors, which included many
of the leading politicians and all the foremost
literary celebrities of France. The terms he
offered as remuneration were the same as those
paid to the first writers. There was here no
suggestion at all that Oscar Wilde's collabora-
tion was desired because the scandal which at-
tached to his name would appeal to the morbid-
minded, and create a profitable sensation. It
was a plain, business-like offer from a very
shrewd business-man to a writer of eminent
and recognised capacity. It was a proposal
which most authors of high standing and Euro-
pean reputation would have taken as a compli-
ment. Yet, although at that time Oscar Wilde
was in sad difficulties through want of money,
he declined the offer without one moment's
consideration. This refusal was cotuteously
worded ; it was with scathing contempt that he
repelled any approaches from the traffickers in
sensation. It is reported that when, just previ-
ous to his release from Reading Gaol, the Gover-
nor informed him that the correspondents of an
American paper who had been waiting in
Reading for some dasrs past were prepared to
pay him a very large fee for the privilege of

279

The Life of Oscar WUde

being allowed to interview him on the subject
of his prison experiences he expressed his sur-
prise that any one should venture to make such
proposals to a gentleman.

Some time previous to this release he had
been speaking to a person in the prison about
his future prospects. He had said that poverty
awaited him outside the prison-gates. His friend
said that " by writing an article or two for the
monthhes he would be able to earn an immediate
supply of money.*' " Ah/* said Oscar Wilde,
" I remember when one editor of the Nineteenth
Century used to come to my house and soUcit
an article, and now I suppose he wouldn't accept
one were I to offer it for nothing."

This friend in relating this conversation adds :
'' I endeavoured to make as Ught of his troubles
as possible, and assured him that all he required
was pen, ink and paper. * My friend,' he said —
he repeated these words on several occasions
— ' You do not know the world as well as I do.
Some people might read what I chose to write
out of morbidness, but I don't want that, I wish
to be read for Art's sake, not for my notoriety.' "

His only contributions to journalism, after he
left prison, were the long letters which he wrote
under the title of " The Case of Warder Martin,"
on " Some Cruelties of Prison Life," and the letter

280

The Life of Oscar Wilde

"Don't Read This if you wish to be Happy
To-Day." These appeared in The Daily Chronicle
on Friday, 28th May 1897, and on 24th March
1898, respectively. Of these letters it need only
be said of them that they were written from a
pure spirit of philanthropy. No self-interest
prompted its author to take pen in hand. It is
a fact, which should be recorded here, that when
he wrote the first letter he was extremely doubt-
ful whether the editor would venture to publish
it. It should be added in proof that gain was
not his motive, that although a friend, the editor
of one of the most important reviews in London,
would, as he knew, have paid almost any fee for
this contribution, he preferred to give it to the
world through the agency of a daily paper, be-
cause he considered first that this exposure of
abuses and cruelty should not be delayed one
day longer than could be avoided, and secondly
that the wider pubUcity of a newspaper with a
great circulation would more effectively arouse
public opinion. The amount of the fee paid to
him, if any fee was paid, is not known, but it
certainly did not exceed if indeed it reached the
foison of the simis which out of a meagre purse,
at a time of great need, he gave away to his
poor comrades in misfortime, those who had
been prisoners with him in Reading Gaol.

281

CHAPTER XIII

Some Traits of his Chancter--08car Wilde in Matteis of
Money — ^His Extreme Delioacy of Feeling — Oscar WUde
as a Talker — ^The Testimony of a Gentleman of Letters —
And of a lian of Action — Oscar Wilde as a Bian of Action
— ^The Reasons of his Popularity — His Small Actual Ro*
duction — ^His Tmmense Real Ontpnt — ^The Value of his
Work— The Testimony of a Scholar — *'The Picture of
Dorian Gray" — ^How it was Written— The Refutation
of a Charge — Wilde and Henley^

Although during the first years of his married
life Oscar Wilde's difficulties were often very
great^ not on one single occasion in the whole of
his life — even in the starveling years after his
release from prison— did he obtain or attempt to
obtain resources by any means unworthy of
proper pride, of self-respect, of deUcacy. He
loved money for the pleasures that it conunands ;
but he did not love it enough to let it soil his
lordly hands. In this respect his pride reached
to arrogance. In money matters he was the
soul of honour — another point in his character
which in a commercial country and amongst the
Bohemians of art and letters would win Uttle
recognition. His generosity was unbounded.
" I have no sense of property," he used to say ;

282

^ r "

ic "7 •/

~ ^

" I I

The Life of Oscar Wilde

bat he did not add that for the property of
others he had a respect as stem as to his own
belongings he was totally indifferent. ^* Friends
always share/' he wrote to a man at Reading,
who had been good to him. He was praying his
acceptance of a sum of money, for the man had
lost his employment. This man, just before
Oscar Wilde's release, had begged him, knowing
that the prisoner was penniless, and greatly con-
cerned as to his position, to accept the loan of
five pounds which he had saved up. With the
most deUghtful badinage did C. 3.3. refuse the
offer. He pretended that to a man of his
extravagance such a sum would be useless. All
this was so as to refuse without hurting the
feeUngs of his friend a stun of money which to
a working-man meant much. In the end he said
that if things came to the worst and he did
wake up one morning to find himself without a
breakfast he would write for the five pounds and
" buy a sandwich with it." The man said :
•' And a cigar." " I hardly think that it would
run to that," said Oscar, " but if there is any-
thing oVer I will buy a postage stamp and write
to acknowledge the money." His generosity
even was misconstrued. Gifts which had been
made by him out of sheer kindness of heart were
represented as bribes for nameless piuposes.

«83

The Life of Oscan Wilde

Towards his mother his liberality knew no limits.
For years before his fall he maintained her in
the affluence which she enjoyed.

During the eight years 1884-1891, although
the total of his published work was not great,
and judged by its quantity alone the man may
be considered not to have greatly progressed,
his development of those qualities and talents
which were his especial distinction was as
astoimding as it was deUghtful. Those years
were to the people who came into contact with
him memorable as a succession of the rarest
intellectual banquets. His spendthrift genius
kept open house. He spoke, and those who
heard him wondered why the whole world was
not listening. There never can have been in
the world's history a talker more delightful.
A great lady said of him to Henri de R6gnier
that when Oscar Wilde was speaking it seemed
to her that a luminous aureole surrounded his
noble head. This remark is also repeated and
confirmed by the testimony of Jean Joseph-
Renaud.

Henri de R^gnier, that gentilhomme de lettres
in the republic of literature, the elegant and
delicate writer of the daintiest prose in the
French language, the poet of distinction, the
noveUst of refinement, pays in his book of essays

284

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Figures et Caractires a tribute to Oscar Wilde
which (for nobility always does compel) he
made public at a time when to write in praise
of him was to court obloquy and foul sus-
picion. Writing of the impression which in
those days Oscar Wilde produced in Paris he
says: —

'' He pleased^ he amused^ he astounded.
People grew enthusiastic about him ; people
were fanatics where he was concerned.*' It
should be noted that Henri de R^gnier speaks
here of the highest Parisian society, the milieu
in which he himself, an elegant man of the
world, moves. He describes the dinner at which
the lady referred to above made her memorable
pronouncement. " The dinner, elegant and pro-
longed, was held in a luxurious room, brilliantly
lighted. Scented violets were banked up on the
cloth. In the cut-crystal glasses champagne
sparkled ; fruits were being peeled with knives
of gold. M. Wilde was speaking. There had
been invited to meet him certain guests who
were not talkative, and who were disposed to
listen to him with pleasure. Of this conversation
and of others I have kept a vivacious and lasting
remembrance. M. Wilde spoke in French with
an eloquence and a tact which yrere far from
common. His expressions were embellished

S85

The Life of Oscar Wilde

with words which had been most judiciously
^ected. As a scholar of Oxford, M. Wilde
could as easily have employed Latin or Greek.
He loved the Greek and Roman antiquities.
His causerie was all purely imaginative. He
was an incomparable teller of tales ; he knew
thousands of stories which linked themselves
one to the other in an endless chain."

Henri de R^gnier here remarks what anyone
who with due attention reads Oscar Wilde's
fairy stories will observe : —

" This*' (by telling stories) "was his way of
saying everything, of expressing his opinion on
every subject : it was the figurative hypocrisy of
this thought '* (the way in which he veiled his
thoughts) . . .

" One might not press M. Wilde too closely
for the meaning of his allegories. One had to
enjoy their grace and the unexpected turns he
gave to his narratives, without seeking to raise
the veil of this phantasmagoria of the mind
which made of his conversation a kind ^of
' Thousand and One Nights ' as spoken.

" The gold-tipped cigarette went out and
Ughted itself again incessantly in the Ups of the
story-teller. As his hand moved with a slow
gesture the scarahtBus of his ring threw off its
green Ughts. The face kept Changing its ex-

a86

JEAN JOSEPH- RENAU I), TRANSLATOR OF "INTENTIONS,** AND AUTHOR

OF A MOST INTERESTING MONOGRAPH ON OSCAR WILDE. MONSIEUR

RENAUn IS THE BEST GENTLEMAN FENCER IN FRANCE.

To face )ntge 287.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

pression with the most amusing mimicry^ the
voice flowed on miceasingly^ dragging a little^
alMrays equal.

'' M. Wilde was persuasive and astonishing.
He excelled in giving a certificate of truth to
what was improbable. The most doubtful
statement when uttered by him assumed for the
moment the aspect of indisputable truth. Of
fable he made a thing which had happened
actually^ from a thing which had actually
happened he drew out a fable. He listened to
the Scheherazade that was prompting him from
within, and seemed himself first of all to be
amazed at his strange and fabulous inventions.
This particular gift made of M. Wilde's conver-
sation something very distinct amongst contem-
porary causeries. It did not, for instance, re-
semble the profound and precise ingenuity of
M. St^phane Mallarm6, which explained facts
and things in a manner so deUcate and exact.
It had nothing of the varied, anecdotic talk of
M. Alphonse Daudet with his striking aperfus
on men and things. Nor did it resemble in any
way the paradoxical beauty of the sayings of
M. Paul Adam, or the biting acridity of M. Henri
Becque. M. Wilde used to tell his stories Uke
ViUiers de TIsle-Adam told them. . . . M.
Wilde charmed and amused, and he gave one the

187

The Life of Oscar WUde

impression that he was a happy man — at ease in
Ufe."

This is the impression of Oscar Wilde as re-
corded by a man of letters who is also a man
of the world, member of the best and most re-
fined society in Paris. We are able to give in
contrast another picture of Wilde in Paris, as a
causeur, by another man of letters of high dis-
tinction, Monsieur Jean Joseph-Renaud, whose
testimony should be of special value in England.
Jean Joseph-Renaud is one of the finest athletes
in France. There is nothing morbid, nor de-
cadent, nor pessimistic about him. He can box,
both in the EngUsh and the French styles ; he
is a sportsman in every sense of the word, and
he has the distinction of being the best gentle-
man fencer in France. He is well known
amongst EngUsh swordsmen, and has given them
cause to remember him. Those who witnessed
his performances at the tournament at the
Crystal Palace a year or two ago will be able to
confirm the statement that there is nothing
morbid, nor effete, about Jean Joseph-Renaud,
and that what he says about Wilde is sincere
and from the heart. The following true account
of his first meeting with Oscar Wilde, and of the
effect which he produced upon the company in
that house in Paris has been described by a

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

great English novelist^ who is at the same time
our sternest literary critic, as masterly in its
truthful representation of the man described.
It shows us Wilde wishing at any cost to
'' amaze/' and having failed in his first manner
readily adopting another mode in which he
triumphed, carrying all before him. The passage
is from the preface to Monsieifr Jean Joseph-
Renaud's excellent translation of '' Intentions.''
Renaud was a mere lad when he first met Wilde
at the house of some of Mrs Wilde's relations in
Paris. This is what he writes : —

" When, an hour late, Mr Wilde entered the
drawing-room, we saw a tall gentleman, who
was too stout, who was clean-shaven, and who
differed from any AuteuU bookmaker, by clothes
in better taste than a bookmaker wears, by a
voice which was exquisitely musical, and by the
pure blue Hght, almost Uke that of a child's
eyes, which shone in his look. In his bulky
cravat of greenish silk an amethyst sparkled
with a subdued light ; his grey gloves, which
were so fine as to be almost transparent, moulded
his graceful hands ; an orchid was shriveUing
itself up in his button-hole. Without Ustening
to the names of the people who were introduced
to him he sat down, and with an air of ex-
haustion begged Madame Lloyd to order the
T 289

The Life of Oscar Wilde

shutters of the dining-room to be dosed and
candles to be lighted. He said that he could
not possibly stand the light of day. . . .

'' The table decorations had to be altered, be-
cause the mauve flowers would have brought
him bad luck. Then, as soon as the hars
d'ctuvres had been served he took definite pos-
session of the conversation. What a disappoint-
ment awaited us. He spoke 'pretentiously/
asked questions, and did not wait for the replies,
or addressed himself to people with too great
directness ; ' You have never seen a ghost ?
No I Oh 1 Now you, Madame, yes, you, Madame,
your eyes seem to have contemplated ghosts. . . .'
Then he declared that one night in a bar each
table was put in its place, and the floor was
swept, not by waiters, but by * the angels of the
close of the day.' His British accent reminded
us of Sarah Bernhardt. ... He next began to
tell us, speaking almost in whispers, as though
he were telling us secrets, and using mysterious
phrases, some poetical and simple tales . . .
about a young fisherman who pretends every
night as he returns from the sea to have seen
syrens ; one day he really does see a syren, but
when he comes home he does not say so . . .
about a sculptor who with the bronze of a
statue of ' Pain Which Lives for Ever' moulds

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

the statue of ' Pleasure which Lasts but for one
Moment/ Next he returned to what was macabre,
and described at length the sensations which a
visit to the Morgue in the different capitals of
the world prociu-es to a man. We found in M.
Wilde the hoaxing cynicism of Baudelaire and
ViUiers de T Isle- Adam as it appeared through
an English medium. Already that fashion of
amazing people seemed much out of date^ and
to this audience of intelligent bourgeois it was
successful only in the bad sense of the word.
The poet noticed this. He kept silent during
the rest of the meal. But later on in the
drawing-room^ while coffee was being served^
the conversation having turned on the success
of a French comedy in England and Germany,
he gently suggested that oiu* prodigious theatri-
cal instinct explains many of our acts ; French
foreign politics, for instance, are theatrical ; they
aim rather at the finest attitude, the most
striking phrases, the most effective gestiu-es^
than at any practical successes. He then ex-
amined our history at length, from Charles X.
up to modem times, from a paradoxical point
of view. His conversation transformed itself,
he displayed extraordinary knowledge and wit.
Men, deeds, treaties, wars passed under re-
view with appreciations, unsuspected, amusing,

2gt

The Life of Oscar Wilde

exact. He made them glitter mider the light
of his words, even as a jeweller awakes new
lights in his gems.

" He then went on to talk about Lady Bless-
ington and Disraeli.

"To tell us of the pains of love of Lady
Blessington he Uttle by Uttle raised himself to
a lofty and intoxicating l3nicism ; his fine voice
hymned, grew tender, rang out, Uke a viol, in
the midst of the emotional silence. This
EngUshman, who just before had appeared
grotesque, reached, reached with simplicity, ay,
surpassed, the expressive power of the most
admirable odes of humanity. Many of us were
moved to tears. One had never thought that
the words of man could attain to such splendour.
And this took place in a drawing-room, and the
man who was speaking never spoke otherwise
than as a man speaks in a drawing-room. We
could understand that a great lady had said of
him : ' When he is speaking I see round his
head a luminous aureole.' "

Many Parisians who heard him in those days
found apt the comparison which an English
friend of his writing in the Gauhis had traced
between his sayings and the largesse of his wit
and the jewels of Buckingham at the Court of
France. " Ses mots," so ran the phrase, " se

292

The Life of Oscar Wilde

r6pandaient autour de lui comme autour de
Buckingham, k la cour de France, se r^pandaient
les bijoux par calcul mal attach^ au poiupoint
scintillant."

Padraic Colum, the young Irish poet, to
whom his admirers look for such great things,
describes in one of his poems in a very striking
way how treasures for the future are laid up in
the minds of men by the words of a teacher.

" But what avail my teaching slight ?
Years hence in rustic speech, a phrase
As in wild earth a Grecian vase."

To Oscar Wilde, the talker, posterity will owe
a great debt.

His voice was inimitable, though in itself an
imitation. He had robbed Sarah Bernhardt of
her golden voice, but he put the larceny to such
a usethat the crime becamean act of social virtue.
The most wonderful things said in the golden
voice of the most wonderful woman : that was
the conversation of Oscar Wilde. To have
heard him speak has made the fortune of in-
numerable Uttle men. There are homunculi
triumphing in the drawing-rooms of the two
hemispheres, who only faintly echo his manner.
The smallest small change from his royal store-
house has made hundreds appear rich. Out of
the tatters of his imperial mantle, which dis-

293

The Life of Oscar Wilde

aster dragged in the mire, many writers, many
speakers, have cut for themselves resplendent
robes in which they strut their small parades
and enjoy their tiny triumphs. One constantly
sees in modem Uterature books which bear upon
the face of them the proof that the author's
whole equipment was that he " remembers to
have heard Oscar Wilde speaking." One of the
most successful books which has appeared in
France during the last fifteen years, a work
which is hailed as an artistic masterpiece, and
which at the same time is a huge commercial
success, is just Wilde talking. '* II passa sa
vie i se parler," and the irony of the gods
sentenced him to the silence of the tomb in the
two most fruitful years of his life, when his
genius had reached its apogee I

It was in his wonderful conversation that he
found an issue for the bubbling energy of his
brain, for his supreme activity. For we have
alwa)^ to remember that Oscar Wilde was a
man of action, condenmed by the social order
of things to inactivity. It is, probably, because
Jean Joseph-Renaud, himself a man of action,
recognises this energy in Oscar Wilde also that
he has espoused his cause and his defence with
ardour so zealous. To the man of action ab-
solute inactivity is ph3rsically impossible, and

294

The Life of Oscar Wilde

as he must be doing he will perform antics
rather than do nothing. Many of the apparent
buifooneries which in his youth were reproached
against Oscar Wilde were the result merely of
a chafing exuberance. He sought^ indeed^ saner
outlets, and his misfortime was that circum-
stances ever barred the way. It is a fact that
at one time not long after his marriage he was
seriously considering the question of presenting
himself as a candidate for ParUament. It is
deeply to be regretted that his poverty prevented
the reaUsation of this project. In a poUtical
career there was no height to which he could
not have aspired. He had every one of the gifts
that would have made of him in diplomacy
an ornament and a treasure to the State. He
would have filled the House of Commons with
delight. He was a bom orator. This he attri-
buted himself to his nationality. Speaking of
the Irish, he once said, referring to himself, in
that self-accusing way which was one of the
pathetic traits of his character : " We are too
poetical to be poets. We are a nation of bril-
Uant failures, but we are the greatest talkers
since the Greeks." He had all the compelling
power of great orators. He could move his
audience by the sheer beauty of his tones. We
have heard Renaud's testimony. Here is another

295

The Life of Oscar WUde

instance : when he was lecturing in Dublin the
audience was not at all sympathetic. His open-
ing remark^ " Let there be nothing in your
houses which was not a joy to the man who
made it/' was received with ironical laughter.
He immediately went off into a eulogy of Ireland^
and gradually worked his hostile audience into
sympathy which reached the culminating point
of enthusiasm when he declared in accents which
fiUed many eyes with tears : " When the heart of
a nation is broken, it is broken in music/* It
was by his manner of speaking to women and
children that he won such undying admirations
from them. A charming scene is related by an
Irish poet who was lunching once at Oakley
Street with Oscar Wilde. Amongst the guests
was a pretty girl, who was barely seventeen
years old, and who had come up to town for her
first season. When Oscar came in the girl
exclaimed : " Oh ! Mr Wilde, where are your
curls ? "

" Oh ! " said Oscar, " I never wear them
after the season is over."

" But, Mr Wilde, yom* curls are real ones ! **

" Oh ! No ! I keep them in a bandbox at
home. I will put them on and wear them for
you the next time you come.'*

It was all so prettily said, with such kindness
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The Life of Oscar Wilde

and humanity that that girl^ remembering the
encotmter^ and having come to know how other
men would have spoken^ could not help but
think of the poor gentleman with grateful
tenderness.

At a dinner given by Mr Frank Harris in
honour of the Princess of Monaco^ one of our
most distinguished novelists^ who had been
estranged from Oscar Wilde during ten years,
was introduced to him afresh. " That night,"
he relates, " Oscar Wilde's conversation was of
the most extraordinary brilliancy. He subju-
gated us all. For my part I found him most
delightful, and thought with regret of all the
pleasure which I had missed during the ten years
in which we had avoided each other." On the
morning after that dinner, the Princess sent her
portrait to Oscar Wilde, and on it she had written
the words :

" Au vrai Art, A Oscar Wilde."

In prison he seems to have preserved his
power of repartee. There are things on record
which were there spoken in the watchful whispers
of those who are dumb by law and under penalty,
and which scintillate with wit. When freedom
released his tongue his friends found that he had
never been more briUiant. Ernest La Jeunesse
in an article which reaches that high point of

297

The Life of Oscar Wilde

literary excellence that it may be said of it that
it is a tribute to the great man about whom it was
written, gives a striking picture of this d3dng
eloquence.

" He is hatmted with a foreboding of deaths
which in the end will kill him. He then tells all
his stories in one breath : it is the bitter yet
dazzling final piece of a display of superhuman
fireworks. Those, who, at the end of his life,
heard him unravel the skein of gold and jewelled
threads, the strong subtleties, the psychic and
fantastic inventions with which he proposed to
sew and embroider the tapestry of the plays
and poems which he was going to write, those
who saw him proud and indifferent, affronting
extinction and coughing or laughing out his
ultimate phrasings, will keep the remembrance
of a sight at once tragic and lofty, the sight of a
man damned yet impassive, who refuses to perish
altogether."

Another picture of Oscar Wilde as a talker,
at this time in his life when the voice was so
soon to be hushed, is given by one who had
known him for years, and who saw him in those
last days. It was not a friend.

" Of course, he had his bad moments, moments
of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but
they were not of long duration. It was part of

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

his pose to luxuriate a little in the details of his
tragic circumstances. He harrowed the feeUngs
of many of those whom he came across ; words
of woe poured from his Ups ; he painted an
image of himself, destitute, abandoned, starving
even (I have heard him use the word after a
very good dinner at Paillard's) ; as he proceeded
he was caught by the pathos of his own words,
his beautiful voice trembled with emotion, his
eyes swam with tears ; and then suddenly, by
a swift, indescribably brilUant, whimsical touch,
a swallow*wing flash on the waters of eloquence,
the tone changed and rippled with laughter,
bringing with it his audience, reUeved, delighted,
and bubbling into uncontrollable merriment.
He never lost his marvellous gift of talking ;
after he came out of prison he talked better than
before. Everyone who knew him really before
and after his imprisonment is agreed about
that." »

He had the delightful way of speaking to the
poor, to inferiors as society calls them, which
distinguishes gentlemen. Amongst this class he
enjoyed great popularity. He is still remem-
bered by them. In a recent letter a gentleman
writes : " By a queer coincidence my cook was
once in his service. She has nothing but good

I From an article signed " A " in The St Jameses Gax$tU,

299

The Life of Oscar Wilde

to say of him and of * his sweet face/ " One
could adduce hundreds of similar testimonies.
In Reading Gaol he was the most popular
prisoner, not only with the prisoners but with
the warders. At Bemeval Monsieur " Sebastian
Melmoth" was the coqueluche of the village.
The peasants adored him ; the village children
loved him; and the coast - guardsmen were
Melmoth's men to a man. He had eminently
that quality of ingratiating himself with the
humble, without sacrificing a tittle of his
dignity, to which the Germans give the name of
"leutselig." There is no English equivalent
for this word ; " affable " does not render it.
The French spoke of him as un homme doux.
He was a kind-hearted gentleman, nothing more.
It is possible that a pathologist would have
seen in the extraordinary briUiancy of Oscar
Wilde's talk, in its imceasing flow and the ap-
parently inexhaustible resoiu*ces of wit and
knowledge on which he drew, the prodromes of
the disease of which he died. The cause of his
death was jneningitis^ which is an inflammation
of the brain, and it is possible that for many
years before this disease killed him it may have
existed in a subacute and chrcmic state which
might account for the almost feverish energy
of his cerebration. But to the ordinary man

300

The Life of Oscar WUde

no saner, no serener, speaker ever appeared. He
seemed at all times master of himself ; it was,
indeed, this perfect maestria of his powers of
conversation which so astounded those who
approached him. When one comes to think of
the matter why should not Oscar Wilde's friends
be satisfied that his memory should go down to
the after-ages as that of one of the most brilliant
talkers who ever lived ? There are men high in
humanity's Walhalla who left little behind them
but the echoes of their voice. The greatest
philosophers, the men who gave new religions to
the world, did not write; they talked. Did
Christ write, did Mahound write, did Socrates
write ? If Oscar Wilde had had the fortune to
find amongst his associates a disciple who would
have taken the trouble to record his teachings —
for he was always teaching — ^when he spoke,
he would have been remembered in the world's
history as one of the wisest of philosophers. He
was the head of a new school of philosophy ; his
philosophy had in its tenets the real secret of
human happiness, and what grander eulogy can
there be for any school than that ? He was an
optimist who understood to the very extremest
extent why mankind is prone to pessimism. He
felt keener than most men the horrors of life,
the cruelties of the world, the desperate sufferings

301

The Life of Oscar Wilde

that social injustice inflicts^ and yet he had
found a way to happiness out of all these evil
things. Nobody could listen to him without
being benefited. His talk was a cry of Sursum
Corda. He taught you to know evil, and by
deriding it to enjoy good. What reason was
there that he should write at all ?

Yet he was alwa)rs blaming himself for his
indolence. He had acquired Carlyle's table for
his study, and sometimes sitting at it, toying
with his pen, he used to say : '' I ought to
be putting black upon white, black upon
white." Those years may have appeared barren
to himself, who was always self-accusing ; and
those who meastu-e genius by its output may
point to his small production when they deny
the genius of Oscar Wilde. Yet there are many
who find that what he did write during that
period of his life was sufficient to give him a very
high place in English Uterature and amongst the
philosophers of the world. These deny that he
was in the right when he once said plaintively :
" I have put my genius into my life ; into my
books I have put my talents only." The effect
that has been produced by his essay " The Soul
of Man," which originally appeared in The
Fortnightly Review in February 1891, has been
described. It brings hope and comfort to

302

The Life of Oscar Wilde

thousands of the world's most cruelly disin-
herited. Who shall say what has been the
wide-spreading and most beneficial influence of
that marvellous book " Intentions '' ? Let one
testimony be quoted. It is that of a man of the
very highest scholarship and learning in England,
whose bent has led him specially to study the
religions and the philosophical s}^tems of the
world. " My experience may be interesting,"
he writes in a letter. '' After taking a high
degree in Classics at Cambridge, and then
reading literature and science, for mere love of
beauty and truth, I happened after about six
years of this, to come across ' Intentions.' This
first reading showed me something different from
any other writer ; I seemed to see the meaning
of literature and art as I never had before ; in
fact he taught me the secret I had always missed.
I said: 'Never man spoke like this man.' It
was a revelation ; more so than when I read
Plato. I secured all his books I could. Every
friend of mine with any culture or insight seems
to have the same experience on reading him.
This is really a remarkable fact, and when my
first judgment of him, as the best of them all,
was always inviting reconsideration in my own
mind, as too remarkable to be true, I found
others holding the same judgment. ... I have

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

always had what I don't like to call an infalliUe
taste in art and literature — ^my friend . . . can say
something as to that — ^but I mention this ab-
sm^dly egoistic belief simply because at first I
had at times a lurking suspicion that my taste
must be wrongs because of my estimate of Wilde.
But I have never found reason to alter it." The
name of the friend whom the writer quotes as
his surety is^ indeed, a patent of critical taste in
Uterature, scholarship and art.

" Intentions," " The Soul of Man," his Fairy-
stories " The Happy Prince," and " The House
of Pomegranates " : it was in these books that
his philosophy was expounded. The only other
work of importance which he published during
this period — ^that is to say, from the date of his
marriage until 1892, when he came to popularity
and its dangers — ^was his novel " The Picture of
Dorian Gray." This story was written to the
order of the proprietors of Lippincot^s Monthly
Magazine, an American periodical which in 1890
was publishing a complete novel by some author
of repute as a supplement to the other contents.
Oscar Wilde was one of the men who were in-
vited by the editor to contribute a complete
tale. When to a Uterary artist is given an order
to produce a work of a certain length in a certain
time, the result is rarely, from the point of view

304

The Life of Oscar Wilde

o£ art, a satisfactory one. The book must from
its very nature smack of artificiality. It is the
manufactured article, not the spontaneous crea-
tion of art. Oscar Wilde was at that time when
the order reached him in considerable financial
embarrassment, and people who saw him then,
remember how delighted he was, poor fellow,
with an order, which promised him a welcome
emolument. It is not conceivable that under
these circumstances he would deliberately write
a book of corrupt morals, calculated to pervert.
He was too anxious to fill the contract with
satisfaction to the proprietors of the magazine.
It would have been a disaster to him if the
editor of Lippincott's had refused the manuscript
on the groimd that the work was an immoral one,
unfit for publication in the pages of a household
magazine. This entirely disposes of the absurd
charge that in writing " Dorian Gray *' Oscar
Wilde set himself the task of producing a corrupt
book. There are people who found it so. This
was one of the charges which were brought
against him at the trial. He defended himself
with splendid folly. If he had simply stated
the facts he would have found the defence far
more effective with an Old Bailey jury. " I was
poor," he might have said, " at the time when I
was asked to write that book. If the manuscript
u 305

The Life of Oscar Wilde

had dissatisfied the editor and he had returned
it I could not have enforced payment if the
book was an immoral one and I had deUberately
written it so. Therefore it is absurd to say that
I wrote it as an immoral book." It is difficult
to understand what grounds there are for so
quahfying this book. It seems to any man of
the world who reads it that the author is almost
too emphatic in his homily against vice. He
thumps his cushion with such vigour that he
really jars upon one's nerves. One wonders
what these vices may be which call forth such
vigour of denunciation. He reminds one of
Calvin, if one could associate Calvin with any-
thing that is graceful and deUcate. The book
might be described as silly, as obviously intended
to ^paier les sots, for one knows of all the nasty
littie vices of silly Uttie men, and the contem-
plation of them certainly does not excite one to
any feeling of tragic horror. The whole thing is
entirely artificial. It is Uterature, not life, and
that is perhaps the cruellest thing that one says
about a work which professes to be a novel.
How purely Oscar Wilde in those days looked
upon this book, not as the exposition of any
particular creed of his, but as an article of
commerce, produced to order, for payment,
for the middle«class market, is shown by the

306

The Life of Oscar Wilde

fact that when he was arranging to issue the
book in volume form^ and it was pointed out to
him that the length of the manuscript did not
reach the tare exacted by the trade for goods of
that kind, he willingly supplied sufficient ad-
ditional matter to make up the required weight.
Works of art are not thus produced. The book
was a commercial speculation ; he wanted money
for it, and from it, and he was much too level-
headed a man to spoil his chances of a financial
success by publishing anything which would
fatally damn the book. If there be such
hideous immorality in the book as certain per-
ceive, Oscar Wilde must have written it im-
ccmsdously . His particular mania was decidedly
epileptiform; and a characteristic of those
maladies is that the sufferers do things, being
entirely unconscious that they are doing them.
In this case " Dorian Gray '* would be the best
documentary evidence of the poor man's irre-
sponsibility for the mad acts which later dis-
figured his career. The whole pother about
** Dorian Gray " is only an exemplification of the
sa3dng of the French argousin : " Give me three
lines of any man's writing and I wiU hang him."
The book was not very weU received. It
was not at the time a commercial success.
The reviewers were not enthusiastic. In the

307

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

AthetkBum for 27th June 1891 we find the
following brief notice of this book : —

" Mr Oscar Wilde's paradoxes are less weari-
some when introduced into the chatter of society
than when he rolls them off in the course of his
narrative. Some of the conversations in his
novel are very smart, and while reading it one
has the pleasant feeling, not often to be enjoyed,
of being entertained by a person of decided
abiUty. The ideas of the book may have been
suggested by Balzac's 'Peau de Chagrin/ and
is none the worse for that. So much may be
said for the 'Picture of Dorian Gray/ but no
more, except, perhaps, that the author does not
appear to be in earnest. For the rest, the book
is unmanly, vicious (though not exactly what is
called improper) and tedious."

In November of the same year there appeared
the first number of The Bookman, a Uterary
organ which specially appeals to the middle-
classes, and where books are mainly considered
from the bookseller's point of view. The editor,
Dr Robertson NicoU, is a very shrewd man,
who would have been the last person in the
world to allow a book of patent immorality to
be noticed in his columns. Yet not only did he
allow it to be reviewed, at length, but he en-
trusted the reviewing of it to no less a person

308

The Life of Oscar WUde

than Walter Pater, which meant that every
lover of Uterature in the world almost would
read the review of " Dorian Gray/' Walter
Pater's review is finely written, but it hardly en-
ables one to ascertain what was his true opinion
of the book. What he says about its author
himself is, perhaps, more interesting and may be
quoted : —

" There is always something of an excellent
talker about the writings of Mr Oscar Wilde ;
and in his hands, as happens so rarely with those
who practise it, the form of dialogue is justified
by its being really alive. His genial laughter-
loving sense of life and its enjoyable intercourse
goes far to obviate any crudity that may be in
the paradox, with which, as with the bright and
shining truth which often imderlies it, Mr Wilde
startling his ' countrjonen ' carries on, more per-
haps than any other writer, the briUiant critical
work of Matthew Arnold. 'The Decay of
L3dng,' for instance, is all but miique in its half
humorous, yet wholly convinced, presentment of
certain valuable truths of criticism. G>nversa-
tional ease, the fluidity of life, felicitous ex-
pression are qualities which have a natural
alliance to the successful writing of fiction ; and
side by side with Mr Wilde's ' Intentions ' (so
he entitles his critical efforts) comes a novel,

309

The Life of Oscar Wilde

certainly original^ and affording the reader a fair
opportunity of comparing his practice as a
creative artist with many a precept he has de-
nounced as critic concerning it/*

Lower down Walter Pater says : " A true
Epicureanism aims at a complete though har-
monious development of man's entire organism.
To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance^
the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr Wilde's
hero — ^his heroes are bent on doing as speedily,
as completely as they can — ^is to lose, or lower
organism, to become less complex, to pass from
a higher to a lower degree of development. . . .
Dorian himself, though certainly a quite tmsuc-
cessful experiment in Epicureanism, in Ufe as a
fine art is (till his inward spoiling takes visible
effect suddenly, and in a moment, at the end of
his story) a beautiful creation. But his story
is also a vivid, though carefully considered ex-
posure of the corruption of a soul, with a very
plain moral, pushed home, to the effect that vice
and crime make people coarse and ugly. . . ."

It is one of the strangest things in Uterary
history that this book should have been indicted
as an immoral work wilfully written to corrupt
the reader.

Oscar Wilde was indignant with his critics^
and in The Daily Chronicle for 2nd July 1890,

310

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and The Scots Observer for 12th July, 2nd August,
and i6th, he published certain "replies" to
these criticisms. One of his remarks has often
been quoted. He said that he did not wish to
become a popular novelist. " It is far too easy,"
he said. The Scots Observer, which afterwards
became The National Observer, was under the
direction of Mr Henley, who was considered an
arbiter in matters of Uteratture. Oscar Wilde
had considerable admiration for this man.
He is reported to have said : " The Essays
of the Renaissance are my Golden Book. I
never travel without them. But it is the
very flower of the Decadence. The last trum-
pet should have sounded at the moment it
was written." A man who was present said :
" But Bfr Wilde, won't you give us time to read
them ? " " Oh, for that," said Oscar WUde,
" you will have time in either world." After his
first meeting with Henley during which while
the editor of The Scots Observer was grim and
sardonic and said nothing, while Oscar was ex-
ceptionally brilliant, he said : '' I had to strain
every nerve in conversation to equal Henley."
Henley afterwards remarked of Wilde : ''He is
the sketch of a great man."

Oscar's brilliant endowments had won him
many enemies. He was widely envied. But

The Life of Oscar Wilde

his detractors had the sop of consolation that in
the commercial sense of the word he was not
successful. They were able to point to a very
great number of writers^ journalists and novelists
who were making very much larger incomes than
Oscar Wilde. This was not difficult, for he was
majdng no income at all. In a commercial
country where repute goes by earnings, and talent
is estimated by what it produces in actual hard
cash, it was an easy matter under these circum-
stances for Oscar's enemies to deny that he had
any talent at all. They did not fail to take
advantage of the opportunity. Until the end of
1891 it was the common comment on him that
he had advertised himself into notoriety by
posturings of various kinds, but that there was
really nothing in him ; that the public had '' no
use for him," and, that but for his wife's income
he would have found his social level long since.
These statements gave pleasure and solace to
the jealous. The time was close at hand when
Oscar Wilde was to show them that he under-
stood as well as any man the secret of great
popularity, and that he could make money with
his pen. After the brilliant success of his first
play, '* Lady Windermere's Fan," it was no
longer open to people to say that the public
would have none of him. It created great heart-

31a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

bomings in London^ much hypertrophy of the
gall-bladders. Yet, if his enemies could only
have foreseen to what disaster success was to
hurry him, none more eagerly than they would
have joined in the frantic applause with which
every night his theatre rang.

313

CHAPTER XIV

A $mus MifabUis—" Lend Arthur Savile's Grime »— Mrs WUde's
Copy— Lady Windermere's Fan — ^The Prmmhr^—Oscax
V^lde before the Curtain — Comments on His Attitude —
The Obvious Explanation — *^ A Woman of no Import-
ance " — " An Ideal Husband *'— Some Criticisms— A New
Departnre— -'< The Importance of being Earnest" — ^Its
Reception — The Critics Disarmed — ^Ita Sapematnral
Qevemess— What that Portended— Oscar Wilde's P^-
chopathia — The Causes of its Pariodical Outbreak — The
Unconsciousness of the Afficted — ^A Document from Hall
Caine's Collection — The Corruption of London — ^Pacts
afterwards Ranranbered — The New Hedonists — Then and
Now — Oscar V^lde in Paris — Two Pen-Pictures of him —
Octave IGrbeau and de Rfegnier.

The year 1892 was the annus mirabilis of our
poor hero's Ufe. It was to put within his
grasp those things which seemed desirable to
him^ the things for which he had laboured so
long^ amidst such disappointments, and with
efforts so varied. He was not to know then,
nor were his delighted friends to know what
success was to bring in its train, nor what would
be the dreadful effect of the intoxicating draught
of triumph which at last he was able to raise
to his lips in the golden beaker of popular fame.
The year began auspiciously for him, for in
January the foremost organ of EngUsh criticism,

3»4

The Life of Oscar WUde

the AthefUBum, which had steadily censured his
work in the past^ reviewed in a flattering and
advantageous manner another collection of short
stories : " Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and
Other Stories/' which had been published in the
previous July by Messrs Osgood, M'llvaine &
Co. These stories were meant to teach nothing ;
they were amusettes merely, intended to interest
and amuse, ''pot-boilers'' as the argot of the
craft calls them. When Oscar Wilde wrote
dpropos of the reviews of " Dorian Gray " that
he had no wish to become a popular noveUst
because that was far too easy he was indulging
in no vainglorious boast. Ne faict ce tour qui
veuUy could not be said to him. It was a posi-
tive fact that had he chosen to write marketable
stu£f there was nobody in London who could
have produced a more saleable and more popular
"line" of fictional reading-matter. He could
invent amusette stories by the hundreds. Many
of his friends have heard him to do it. When he
was living in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square,
his brother Willy, who used to virite stories for
the papers and the magazines, often came to him
in the mornings, while Oscar was still in bed,
and would say : '* Oscar, I want the plot of a
story or two. Yates is asking me for some."
Then Oscar, still puffing his cigarette, would

3«S

The Life of Oscar Wilde

begin to invent stories. One morning, a friend
of his recalls, he thus invented the plots of six
short stories for his brother in less than half-an-
hour. The stories were afterwards written, and
proved very popular. He furnished many other
men with the ideas which Nature had refused
to them. He equipped many writers with their
entire stock-4n-trade. The mere eavesdropper
at his door showed that he could foimd a Uterary
' \t>^ ^ I reputation and a fortune on such fragments of

r'\^ k/^ I Oscar Wilde's conversation, as, straining his
Y->< ,-^^ i ears, he was able to overhear. In ** Lord Arthur
Savile's Crime," he gives a specimen of this
kind of work. It is not an exaggeration to say
that had he chosen he could have produced a
volume of, at least, equal merit every month of
his life. But he despised work of that kind.
" It was far too easy." Still the elements of
popularity and of financial reward were there.
Here, for instance, is the opinion of the
AthefUBum referred to above. Now the Athe-^
naum's opinions have an undoubted effect on
the trade, and it is in the hands of the retail
bookseller that the fame and fortune of literary
craftsmen rest in our commercial England.

" Mr Oscar Wilde's Uttlebook of stories," so
runs this review, which appeared in the number
for 23rd January 1892, "is capital. They are

316

The Life of Oscar Wilde

delightfully humorous, witty, and fresh, sparkling
with good things, full of vivacity and well put
together."

" ' The Canterville Ghost ' is a first-rate ghost
story, told partly from the point of view of the
ghost himself — b, most refreshing novelty — ^and
partly from that of the American family who
have bought the ancestral home of the Canter-
villes. ' Lord Arthur Savile's Crime * is a very
good story, too, told in a vein of drollery which
is quite distinctive. These two pieces will bear
reading aloud — a decidedly severe test."

As late as last year there was on sale in one of
the second-hand book-shops in London a copy
of this book, which was inscribed : —

" Constance from Oscar, July, '91."

It was the copy which he had presented to his
wife. In this volume the following passages
were marked in pencil, no doubt by the author
himself, wishing to call attention to certain parts
of the book which Sterne, had he been the writer,
would probably have printed on purple patches.
It will give a taste of the quahty of this book if
we reproduce three passages so marked.

'* Actors are so fortunate. They can choose
whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy,
whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or
shed tears. But in real life it is so different.

317

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Most men and women are forced to perform
parts for which they have no qualifications.
Our Guildenstems play Hamlet for us, and our
Hamlet has to jest like Prince Hal. The world
is a stage, but the play is badly cast."

" And yet it was not the mystery, but the
comedy of suffering that struck him ; its ab-
solute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning.
How incoherent ever3rthing seemed ! How lack-
ing in all harmony! He was amazed at the
discord between the shallow optimism of the day
and the real facts of existence. He was still
very young."

It was perhaps not, after all, to draw the at-
tention of his wife to the purple patches in his
book that Oscar Wilde made those pencil-marks
in this volume. It was, perhaps, in one of those
lucid moments of foreboding which come to
certain men. He may have foreseen the part
that was to be forced upon him to play ; have
felt in advance the absolute uselessness of the
suffering which he was to undergo; and have
detected behind the shallow optimism of the
day what were the real facts of existence. In
the concluding words of the third passage we
also detect a strange application to his own case
as the future was to reveal it.

" The great piles of vegetables looked like
318

The Life of Oscar Wilde

masses of jade against the morning sky^ like
masses of green jade against the pink petals of
some marvellous rose. Lord Arthur felt curi-
ously affected^ but could not tell why. There
was something in the dawn's loveliness that
seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic^ and he
thought of all the days that break in beauty and
that set in storm.''

The time was, however, now at hand when
his apparent optimism and that mask of strong
confidence in himself which gave such umbrage
to his rivals were to receive at the hands of the
British pubUc their fullest warranty. It was on
the night of 20th February that there was pro-
duced at the St James's theatre the new and
original play in four acts, " Lady Winder-
mere's Fan," by Oscar Wilde. The performance
announced itself as a success even before the
curtain had risen on the first act. The house
was full, the audience was a friendly one. Still,
London Society was yet unconquered. The
audience, if friendly, was not a briUiant one.
It was la grande Bohhne that came to judge of
Oscar Wilde as a dramatist." " Never," says a
contemporary writer, '' did audience at a premise
appear less brilliantly attired. The duchesses,
countesses, and other grandes dames whose
foibles and follies were to be held up over the

S19

The Life of Oscar Wilde

footlights were absent. Amongst the ladies
present whose toilettes were noticed were Mrs
Bram Stoker * in a wonderful evening wrap of
striped brocade/ Mrs Jopling-Rowe 'becom-
ingly arrayed in shrimp-pink^ Ughtly accented
with black/ Mrs Pinero, Miss Julia Neilson,
and Miss Florence Terry. Mrs Oscar Wilde
was there^ and we read that * she looked
charming in her pale-blue brocaded gown made
after the fashion of Charles I/s time^ with
its long tabbed bodice^ slashed sleeves^ and
garniture of old lace and pearls.' Amongst other
distinguished people in the audience were^ Mrs
Langtry, Mrs Campbell-Praed, Mr Bancroft, Mrs
Hare, Mr Charles Matthews, Mr Inderwick, Dr
Playfair, Mr Luke Fildes, Mr Forbes-Robertson,
and Mr Oswald Crawford.**

The success of the play was never in doubt,
and here again Oscar Wilde's peculiar genius
triumphed. He established the falsity of that
axiom, "The play is the thing," which the
greatest of dramatists laid for the guidance of
future playwrights. His play was not the thing,
to which he had paid attention, on which he had
labomred. His story was of the kind which has
always tempted t3n:o dramatists. It was only
another version of "The Wife's Secret." For
the first night or two of " Lady Windermere's

320

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Fan," the secret of Mrs Erlynne's identity was
kept from the audience until the d/nouement^
which was, of course, the greatest mistake that
the playwright could have committed. Mrs
£rl3nuie is Lady Windermere's mother, a de-
classie who is supposed to be dead, but whom
Lord Windermere befriends for her daughter's
sake. From this proceeds the entanglement.
In a caricature of Oscar Wilde which appeared
in the following number of Punch he was re-
{NPesented as leaning on a pedestal with his elbow
propped upon volumes of " Odette," " Fran-
dllon/' and " Le Supplice d'Une Femme," to
make room for which a bust of Shakesp)eare has
been dethroned. At his feet is a volume of
Sheridan's comedies* The suggestion was, of
course, that he had drawn his inspiration from
these various works. Many other plays in
which the donn/e is almost identical with that
of " Lady Windermere's Fan " might have been
dted. The question was not there. It was by
his way of treating a time^ld subject that he
scored his great success. His dialogue was
wonderful because it was he himself talking all
the time. As he never failed to charm and de*
light, almost to the point of mental intoxication,
those who were privileged to listen to him, there
was no reason that his success should have been

The Life of Oscar Wilde

any smaller here. For the rest, the play was
beautifully produced. The dresses and decora-
tions were magnificent, and the acting far from
being — as Oscar Wilde once put it — " a source
of danger in the perfect representation of a work
of art/' made a play of what risked at one time
to be classed only as a spoken extravaganza.

At the end of the performance in answer to
the enthusiastic calls of the audience Oscar
Wilde came in front of the curtain. He was
carrying a half-smoked cigarette in his hand.
He made a curious speech, in which he said that
he was pleased that they had enjoyed themselves,
which was what he could say of himself. The
carrying of a cigarette, and the tone of the speech
were most adversely commented upon by the
critics. Clement Scott in Monday's Daily Tele-
graph was severe on the breach of maimers
committed, " when undeterred by manager^
unchecked by the public voice, unreprimanded
by men, and tacitly encouraged by women, an
author lounges in front of the f ootUghts without
any becoming deference of attitude, takes no
trouble to fling aside his half-smoked cigarette,
and proceeds to compliment the audience on its
good sense in liking what he himself has con-
descended to admire/' In Truth the chastise-
ment administered was much more severe.

32«

The Life of Oscar Wilde

These are some extracts from the article which
appeared in that jomnal : —

" It is strange that the legitimate Irish suc-
cessor to Joe Miller should have forgotten one of
the stalest stories of his native DubUn. There
was once on a time a row in a DubUn gallery.
'Throw him over! Turn him out/ were the
cries vociferously yelled by the gods. But dur-
ing the lull there came a reproving voice : ' Be
aisy bhoys I Don't waste him. Spile a fiddler
with him I ' They were dangerously near spoil-
ing a fiddler with Oscar Wilde last Saturday
night. No one was quite prepared for his last
move in calm effrontery, deUberately planned
and gratuitously offensive. It took the whole
audience aback. But when the meaning of the
whole thing dawned upon those present, when it
was discovered that the so-called dramatist was
calmly pu£Bng himself between the whiffs of a
cigarette in a pubUc playhouse I could see the
fists and toes of countless men nervously twitch-
ing. They wanted to get at him. Luckily for
Oscar the well-known pittites and gallery boys
do not patronise the St James's Theatre, else
that famous speech woidd never have been
finished without serious damage to Mr Alex-
ander's property."

In Punch of the following week the incident

3«3

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was the subject of an article illustrated with the
caricature referred to above, and entitled " A
Wilde ' Tag ' to a Tame Play/' where Oscar
Wilde's gaucherie was humorously and not too
unkindly satirised.
y For that his conduct was nothing but a

gaucherie it needs not charity to beUeve. It is
obvious. The man was under the shock of a
great joy. He had temporarily lost his head.
He did not know what he was doing. We have
.jail read of the strange antics which dramatic
authors have performed under similar emotion.
Daudet, for instance, used to go rushing along
the streets of Paris like a madman. In Oscar's
case emotion would be all the more overwhelming
that the verdict of the audience that night meant
for him rescue from all the forlorn makeshifts
and hazardous expedients of his career, release
from poverty, popular affirmation of a talent
which his detractors had persistently denied,
all those things in fact, which artists may dis-
dain but for lack of which they perish. He was
a bulky, full-blooded man ; the blood rushed
to his head, and he was unconscious of what he
was doing. As to the cigarette, well, it was half-
smoked. It had not been lighted for the pur-
pose of the entry. He was such a habitual
smoker that probably he did not even know that

3^4

The Life of Oscar Wilde

he had a cigarette in his hand. Such smokers
notice nothing except when they are not smok-
ing. As to his remarks, it was the bafouiUage
of a man who was not master of himself. Pos-
sibly he remembered vaguely in his confusion that
the Latin dramatists used to put into the mouths
of the actor who spoke last a message to the
audience to applaud. Poor Oscar's classical
training played him unconsciously a nasty trick.
His " Vos Plaudite " was taken as an offence.
The thing is so obvious. Is it probable that a
man who had been struggling for years for
success, popularity and money from his pro-
fession woidd deUberately insult his audience
and ruin the prospects which had shown them-
selves so rosy ? The man was not a fool, and it
seems as unlikely — ^unless we are to consider
him suffering that night from one of the attacks
of his epileptiform malady — that he would have
acted as he did from a deliberate and calculated
wish to treat his patrons with insolent arrogance,
as that he purposely made a corrupt and im-
moral book of his novel.

For the rest, the London pubUc took no notice
of the incident. The author's private manners
did not concern it at all. There was a good play
to be seen at the St James's Theatre, and London
went to see it. The opinion, then expressed,

3*5

The Life of Oscar Wilde

has been ratified since. The play has frequently
been revived, and each time with increased suc-
cess. It is playing this year in America before
enthusiastic houses. On the Continent, with
the exception, perhaps, of Italy, this play meets
with Uttle approval. For the French it is
choses vues ; the Germans speak of it as a
Gartenfnauer comedy, which means something
that appeals only to the public in a certain en-
vironment.

As he drove home radiant that night Oscar
Wilde could say to himself : " I am the author
of * Lady Windermere's Fan.' " No doubt that
he did say it. May it be hoped that no fore-
boding came to trouble his tranquil joy, no fore-
boding of the times so close at hand when he
might be called by no other name than that.

Three years of prosperity and triumph were
to be accorded to him. The period of want was
over ; he was acknowledged one of the first
playwrights on the EngUsh stage ; his income
sprang from nothing to several thousands a
year. During this period of three years he pro-
duced successfully three other plays. On 19th
April 1893 was performed his " A Woman of
No Importance." On this occasion he was
blamed for not responding to the cry of the
audience for a speech. This time, however, he

326

The Life of Oscar Wilde

had kept his head^ for such emotions as had
moved him on the night of his first success
come to a man once only in life. " A Woman
of No Importance '* frequently played since,
formerly as by the author of " Lady Winder-
mere's Fan/' and now under the author's real
name, has continued to please and amuse the
English-speaking audiences of two worlds.

In 1895 he produced two plays of a very
different character. The one, *' An Ideal
Husband," was first brought out on 3rd
January. The Times critic wrote of this per-
formance : —

" ' An Ideal Husband ' was brought out last
night with a similar degree of success to that
which has attended Mr Wilde's previous pro-
ductions. It is a similar degree of success due
to similar causes. For ' An Ideal Husband ' is
marked by the same characteristics as ' Lady
Windermere's Fan ' and * A Woman of No Im-
portance.' There is a group of well-dressed
men and women on the stage talking a strained
inverted but rather amusing idiom, while the
action, the dramatic motive springs from a con-
ventional device of the conunonest order of
melodrama."

The AthetuBum's criticism may also be quoted
in part. It endeavours to explain Oscar Wilde's

327

The Life of Oscar Wilde

dramaturgical process^ and to account for his
undeniable success.

'* One of the constituent elements of wit is the
perception of analogies in things apparently dis-
parate and incongruous. Accepting this as a
canon^ and testing it by the pretensions of Oscar
Wilde in his latest play, the writer might be pro-
nounced the greatest of wits, inasmuch as he
perceives analogies in things absolutely anta*
gonistic. His presumable end is gained, since
a chorus of laughter attends his propositions or
paradoxes. It requires, however, gifts of a kind
not usually accorded to humanity to think out
a statement such as * High intellectual pleasures
make girls' noses large ! ' ' Only dull people
are brilliant at breakfast. . .* * All reasons are
absurd,' and the Uke."

An intimate friend of Oscar Wilde's remembers
talking of this criticism with the playwright.
" It is not very difficult, Oscar," he said, " to
see what suggested to you the statements which
the critic finds so weird. When you wrote that
about girls' noses you had probably in mind the
connection between the pains of thought and
that French expression which describes the
lengthening of the nose as an outward physical
sign of mental perplexity or chagrin, faire un
nez. As to the remark about dull people being

3^8

The Life of Oscar Wilde

brilliant at breakfast you obviously meant that
nervous, high-strung people, people of pleasure,
of thought, of midnight labours are, in fact, at
their worst at breakfast time, when by contrast
with them the eupeptic, healthy, people not of
nervous temperaments appear at their best."
" You are quite right," said Oscar, '* but you
overlook the third statement complained of.
All reasons are absiurd I "

Till then Oscar Wilde's success as a playwright
had been great ; yet he had not so far shown
even a small part of the splendid service which
it was in his power to render to the gaiety of our
nation. In the early part of January he devoted
a fortnight to the writing of a comedy of the
farcical order to which he gave the name of
" The Importance of Being Earnest " : this
was produced for the first time on 14th February
at the St James's Theatre. The author described
this piece himself as a " trivial comedy for serious
people." He is reported also to have said of it
that " the first act is ingenious, the second
beautiful, the third abominably clever." As a
matter of fact, the whole is abominably clever,
while, perhaps, also both ingenuity and beauty
are lacking. The plot certainly displays none
of the former quality and beauty, except in the
abstract sense which appUes to any work of art

329

The Life of Oscar Wilde

which is dose to perfection of its kind^ has, of
course, nothing to do, in that galire. Clever it
is beyond praise, because here once again we
have Oscar Wilde joking as only Oscar Wilde
could joke. It is an extravaganza spoken by
Oscar through the mouths of a number of men
and women.

" Almost every sentence of the dialogue,"
said The Times critic next morning, " bristles
with epigram of the now accepted pattern, the
manufacture of this being apparently conducted
by its patentee with the same facility as * the
butterwoman's rank to market.' '*

" Yet frivolous, saucy, and impertinent as Mr
Wilde's dialogue is," wrote the Athenaum critic,
'' and imcharacteristic also, since every personage
in the drama says the same thing, it is, in a way,
diverting. The audience laughs consumedly,
and the critic, even though he should chafe,
which is surely superfluous, laughs also id
spite of himself. There is, moreover, a grave
serenity of acquiescence in the most mon-
strous propositions that is actually and highly
humorous."

The writer of " At The Play " in the March
number of The Theatre found the " new trivial
comedy 'a bid for popularity in the direction
of farce.' Stripped of its * Oscarisms ' — ^regarded

330

The Life of Oscar Wilde

purely as a dramatic exercise — ^it is not even a
good specimen of its class."

The critic in Truth fairly surrendered at last.

*' I have not the sUghtest intention of seriously
criticising Mr O. Wilde's piece at the St James's,"
he writes under the heading of " The Importance
of Being Oscar," " as well might one sit down
after dinner and attempt gravely to discuss the
true inwardness of a sauffU. Nor, unfortunately,
is it necessary to enter into details as to its wildly
farcical plot. As well might one, after a success-
ful display of fireworks in the back garden, set to
work laboriously to analyse the composition of
a Catherine Wheel. At the same time I wish to
admit, fairly and frankly, that ' The Importance
of Being Earnest ' amused me very much."

The public never had a moment's hesitation
about the play. Each audience laughed as never
has audience laughed before in a theatre where
the work of an EngUsh writer of comedy has
been performed. Oscar Wilde had transplanted
to London the exuberant gaiety of Paris, without
appealing by even the faintest suggestion to that
fumier of which Heine spoke as being the soil
on which all French comedy and farce thrive.
The play is a clean play, a play of the " knock-
about " farcical order, with this tremendous dis-
tinction that the knock-about here is not a

331

The Life of Oscar WUde

physical conflict^ but a perpetual tussle of wit
and repartee. It was aptly described as a
" fantastic farce." We had here the true Oscar,
or rather one of the true Oscars, full of roUicking,
boyish, extravagant humour, turning to mirth
all things. . . . Many people who had all along
been hostile to him as a man and as a writer,
who '' had seen nothing in his works,'" and had
professed to be bored by his more serious
comedies, became Wilde's men heart and soul
after having witnessed this play. A great Irish
writer remarked recently that after he had seen
" The Importance of Being Earnest " in Dublin,
he began to look forward with impatience to the
day when Oscar Wilde's ashes should be brought
from Bagneux cemetery back to his native land,
and a statue to the great dramatist should be
raised on the banks of the Anna Liffey. And
these were the words of a C3mical man of the
world, ever chary of praise.

After that night at the St James's Theatre
London felt itself, indeed, the imperial city which
is under tribute to no other nation for its enjoy-
ments as for its wants. One may fancy what
would have been the f eeUng of the Romans if
one day a dramatist had risen up amongst them
who rendered their arena free of Greece. Our
pride was flattered ; we could hurl back the re-

33«

The Life of Oscar Wilde

proach of national dulness ; we foresaw with
pleasurable and gratified anticipation the return
to the English stage of the laurel-wreath that
centuries ago had been wrested from us by the
foreigner. We felt that we could close our
front*door and put out a notice to the Ibsens^
the Scribes^ the Sardous^ the Mosers, the Brissons^
the Capuses, and the rest that we thanked them
kindly for their calls, but that we needed nothing
that day or on any subsequent day.

Alas f not one of those who witnessed that
wonderful premiire at the St James's Theatre —
unless, indeed, somewhere in the stalls or boxes
there may have been seated in observation some
acute pathologist — did realise that the very
brilliancy which so deUghted him was but a
s)anptom of a cruel mental disease. The clever-
ness displayed appeared to the dazzled audience
supemattu-al. It was so indeed. As one may
see in the drcus-ring clowns and acrobats who
perform prodigious feats because before they
come into the arena they have stimulated to the
uttermost their nerves and muscles, and for a
short time, indeed, do appear to be capable of
deeds of skill and daring which no ordinary man
might with impunity attempt ; as one sees in
the Indian bazaar the feeble fakir, frenzied with
drugs, running a tigerish course of devastation

333

The Life of Oscar Wilde

and murder : so here too an agency was at work
which had forced the genius of the man who so
impressed us vnth its splendour over the narrow
border-line of which Dryden speaks.

From circumstances which so soon afterwards
became matters of pubUc knowledge and dismay
there can be no doubt that it was a diseased brain
which had fashioned for deUght and laughter
these splendid and exuberant imaginings.

It will be remembered that in the early part
of 1892 Oscar Wilde suddenly passed from a
precarious and troubled existence, from which
sheer penury was not alwa3rs absent, to a height
of prosperity and prospects of great wealth and
power. Even the strongest heads have been
known to turn under such a shock. In Oscar
Wilde's case we have a man, who by predis-
position and atavism on both sides of his family
was one least prepared to withstand a shock so
powerful. Ph5^ical causes contributed to in-
flame what may be described as the psychical
traumatism caused by this blow. He was ever
a man fond of the pleasures of the table, of
wines and spirits, and the use of the narcotic,
tobacco. Till that point in his career absence
<Jf 'means had put a certain check upon extra-
vagant indulgence. After his accession to pros-
perity this check was removed, and for many

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The Life of Oscar WUde

months, indeed, for the period of three years, he /
was overstimulatmg his body and poisoning hisr
nerve-centres to an extent which is revealed to
OS by the complete state of nemasthenia into
which he fell shortly before his death. A very
distinguished lady who has made a life-study of
the question of nutrition on the mental state of
man recently expressed in a letter her con-
viction that it was to his irregular mode of Ufe
that much of Oscar Wilde's downfall could be
attributed, both before and after his confinement
in a gaol.

" My belief is," she wrote to the author of
" The Story of an Unhappy Friendship" — " and
you seem to suggest something of the same kind
— ^that the prison fare restored his health and his
brain, and that had he had some really true
friend who could have kept all alcohol and all
meat and high living from him he would have
returned to his poor wife, and all would have been
different. I am so entirely convinced this is the
case in hundreds of cases. The return to old
drinks and the old foods reproduces the old self-
same mental aberration which continually makes
prisoners return to exactly the same state they
were in before they went to prison, and to commit
the same crimes."

The temperance lecturers, if they had the

335

The Life of Oscar Wilde

courage to quote the example, could find in the
cases of those two brilliant men, William and
Oscar Wilde, most striking demonstrations of the
truth of their teachings, and the importance of
their warnings. The man who drinks may not
injure himself, he may die in good repute and Ue
buried under eulogistic marble, but he transmits
to his aftercomers in their Ufe-blood the very
germs of dissolution, crime, and death. Oscar
paid in his innocent person the toll that Nature
exacted for the centimes of Hibernian convivia-
Uty of rollicking ancestors. He was never once
intoxicated in his Ufe ; except in the very last
mournful weeks of his life, when he sought in
alcohol a stimulus to his flagging brain, he held
excess in abhorrence ; yet by reason of his
descendance his indulgences, such as they were,
in strong drink and gourmandising on stimulating
foods, which would have been harmless to a man
not predisposed by heredity, incontestably pro-
duced the terrible mischief which was the cause
of his ruin, disgrace and death. We have in his
Ufe the clearest demonstration of this fact. One
has but to compare his mental, moral, and
physical condition while he was leading a Ufe of
excess, vnth the man whom we see in his cell
in Reading Gaol, writing " De Profundis."
Max Nordau was in the right when he spoke of

336

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde as a degenerate, and his essay would
have had more effect had it been worded vnth
more charity and less rancour. There was in
the composition of that wonderful brain, hidden
somewhere, a demon factor, which the coup de
fauet of alcohol and excess of stimulating food
could lash into periodical activity. The evidence
is very strong that Oscar Wilde's special form of
disease was epileptiform, as indeed are all the
most cruel afiBictions of the brain. One striking
characteristic of these formidable maladies is
that their victim, who, while under the influence
of the paroxysm he commits the most atrocious
deeds, is, when he recovers his sanity, totally
unconscious of what he has done. When Hall
Caine some years ago was preparing for a book
on drunkenness he was supplied by the great
American temperance lecturer, Gough, with an
illustration of the fatal dangers of drink to certain
natures. " A man," related Gough, " woke up
one morning in the lock-up in New York. Hor-
ribly ashamed to find himself, a worthy, re-
spectable citizen, in such a place, he called to the
warder and asked him what could have caused
his arrest. ' I suppose I got drunk last night ? '
he said. ' You did so,' said the warder. ' My
poor wife ! ' cried the man bitterly ashamed,
' what will she say when she hears that ? ' He

V 337

The Life of Oscar Wilde

then asked how soon it would be before he was
taken before the magistrate to pay his fine and
to return home. ' You won't go up to-day/
said the warden ' You are in for murder. You
killed someone last night ! * The horrified
prisoner refused to beUeve it. When at last
the dreadful truth dawned upon him that the
warder was speaking seriously^ and that^ indeed^
his hands were stained in bloody he thought first
of all of the misery and consternation which this
would produce at home. ' My poor wife ! My
poor wife ! ' he cried. ' Why, man ! ' cried the
warder, almost indignantly, for he supposed the
man to be feigning ignorance, 'sure and it's
your wife that ye've murdered.' This was with-
out a doubt a man suffering, though he did not
know it, from an epileptiform afiliction. He was
a man who if he had never got drunk might have
lived a blameless and honoured life. The alcohol
had whipped the sleeping fiend into activity.
There are thousands of men walking about
London at this moment who are in his case.
One reads every day in the law reports, in the
sordid and mournful records of the poKce-courts
and the Old Bailey, of cases which exactly tally
with this one. That Oscar Wilde's psycho-
pathia was the same, every piece of evidence
that we have before us goes to confirm. Alcohol

338

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was sheer poison to him. AU the extraordinary
acts which he committed, the acts of sheer in-
sanity, were conmiitted, not when he was drunk,
for he never was drunk, but when alcohol had
developed an epileptic crisis in his head. It is
such a pity that people, because they are still
so entirely under the stupid domination of the
Church, will not approach the consideration of
these matters in a purely scientific spirit. After
each crisis Oscar Wilde seems to have been totally
unconscious of having done an3rthing bad, de-
testable, shameful, or even unusual. Under no
other condition could he have maintained the
serene and tranquil dignity which stamped him
in his sane moments. Many of his friends re-
fused to beUeve one word of the charges brought
against him when the terrible revelations of the
Old Bailey were made. Many even to-day re-
fuse to beUeve them. It must be remembered,
also, that until the very day of his arrest his
wife had not the faintest suspicion of an3rthing
wrong in his conduct. Such consummate dis-
simulation, where it is not h3^ocrisy — and Oscar
Wilde was no hypocrite, could not be a hypo-
crite, was too arrogant to be a hj^xxaite — ^is in-
variably the concomitant of the worst forms of
madness.
Daring the three or four years of his excessive

339

The Life of Oscar Wilde

indulgences in drink and food his conduct ap-
pears^ from what was heard afterwards^ to have
caused disquietude to his friends^ and disgust
to his enenciies. After his downfall one heard
that during that time his example had made
London " impossible/' This one man^ it was
stated^ had corrupted the metropolis of the
world's greatest empire. He had infected six
millions of men and women. These statements^
when people came to reflect, did not appear, even
to those who had never paused to consider
causes, so entirely preposterous. It was re-
membered that during the period referred to the
language of certain market-porters, cornermen,
and fishwives in London had been far from
select ; that during those years the Divorce
Courts had never once suspended their sittings,
except in times of vacation ; that the attend-
ances at many churches and chapels in the
metropolis had often been mournfully exiguous ;
and that it was dangerous for any respectable
woman to walk alone and unattended after
midnight in the Haymarket or Piccadilly.

It is incontestable also that during that period
a number of minor writers of verse, who called
themselves new Hedonists or modem decadents,
pubUshed Uttle books of unpleasing verses, and
that one or two pubUshers did in the issuing of

340

The Life of Oscar WUde

these verses realise a certain competency. But
the readers of these verses were very few, and
the nasty, Uttle poets soon crept back into their
suburban kennels, to take to easier and more
remunerative forms of writing. If one looks
to-^y for the pornographic pleiad which was
oozed forth on to the surface of the London mud
in those days, it is not even in the purUeus of
Parnassus that such individuals as have sur-
vived vdll be found. They are middle-aged now,
the new Hedonists, whiskered and paunchy.
The thin veneer of artistry has long since been
peeled off their faces, and the rank stigmata of
the Philistine now stand forth. There is a
horrible passage in one of Lombroso's books in
which, writing of criminal women, he sa)^ that
in youth it is very difficult, almost impossible,
for the physiologist to detect the sure signs of
their criminaUty. The freshness of their com-
plexions, the chubbiness of their faces hide the
stigmata. It is only towards middle-age that
these signs, which all along have been there,
though concealed by the mask of youth, come
forth in all their horrible significance. This
passage often occurs to him who to-day considers
the men who formed the band of decadents and
hedonists, who mimicked Oscar Wilde in his acts
of insanity, thinking in that wise to gain some

34X

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of the refulgence which shone from the genius
of his lucid intervals.

During those years he frequently crossed to
Paris. There^ at least, and speaking generally^
no suspicion assailed him. In the essay by
Henri de R6gnier, to which reference has been
made above, we find a pen portrait of him as
he was at that time, and before quoting it it
may be as well to put down what was the
opinion of this writer on Oscar Wilde, as he
summed it up at the end of his essay, which, it
should be remembered, was written after aU
the exposure had taken place.

" In any case," he writes, " we may ignore
what was his manner of life in London, and re-
call only that we met in Paris an amiable and
eloquent gentleman of that name whom all will
remember who are fond of beautiful language
and beautiful stories.'*

This is the picture which Henri de R^nier
paints of Oscar Wilde in the early nineties : —

'' Each year, in the spring and sometimes in
the winter, one used to meet a perfect English
gentleman in Paris. He used to lead in Paris
the Ufe which Monsieur Paul Bourget, for in-
stance, might lead in London, frequenting
artists, and showing himself in solans and
fashionable restaurants in the company of the

342

The Life of Oscar Wilde

leaders of mundane society ; seeking in one word
all things which can interest a man who knows
how to think, and who knows how to hve.

'' This foreigner was tall and of great corpul*-
ence. A high complexion seemed to give still
greater width to his clean-shaven and proconsular
face. It was the unbearded {glabre) face that
one sees on coins. The eyes smiled. The hands
seemed to be beautiful : they were rather fleshy
and plump, and one of them was ornamented
with a ring in which a beetle of green stone was
set. The man's tall figure allowed of his wearing
ample and masterly frock-coats, which opened
out on somewhat ' loud ' waistcoats of smooth
velvet or flowered satins. Oriental cigarettes
with gold tips were ever consuming themselves
into smoke in his mouth. A rare blossom in his
button-hole gave a finishing touch to his rich
attire in which every detail seemed to have been
carefully studied. From cab to cab, from caf6
to caf^, from salon to salon, he moved with the
la2y gait of a stout man who is rather weary.
He carried on his correspondence by means of
telegrams, and his conversation by means of
apologues. He passed from a luncheon with
Monsieur Barrfe to a dinner with Monsieur
Mor^as, for he was curious about all kinds of
thoughts and manners of thinking, and the bold,

343

The Life of Oscar Wilde

concise and ingenious ideas of the former in-
terested him as much as the shorty sonorous and
peremptory afi&rmations of the latter. Paris
welcomed this traveller vdth a certain amount
of curiosity. M. Hugues Le Roux praised him,
M. T6odor de Wyzewa scratched him, but no-
thing disturbed his stoUd bearing, his smiling
serenity, and his mocking beatitude. Which of
us did not meet him during those years ? I
also had the pleasure of seeing him, and of seeing
him again sometimes. His name was Oscar
Wilde. He was an Enghsh poet and a man
of wit."

However, when he was accompanied, as he
sometimes was, by the evil genius of his life,
he seems in Paris, also, to have displayed eccen-
tricities which did not escape the keen and
satirical observation of certain. In Octave
Mirbeau's book, " Le Journal d'Une Femme de
Chambre,*' there is a picture of Oscar Wilde,
which reveals him as the poseur that he seemed
to be when his fits were upon him, or when he
had at his side to prompt him the corrupting
influence which we have indicated. Mirbeau
describes a soirie, a dinner-party in the grande
Bohhne of Paris, at which are present two English
guests, Luden Sartorj^ and Sir Harry Kimberly.
The characteristics of these two friends are de-

344

The Life of Oscar Wilde

scribed in the crude realism of expression which
is employed throughout the book by Mirbeau.
Sir Harry Kimberly is Oscar Wilde. It is ap-
parent that Mirbeau must have met him at some
such dinner-party as is depicted here^ and that
Oscar Wilde was talking nonsense. He records
a long story which Oscar Wilde told on that oc-
casion, adding just enough of his own to carry
the bathos of it to its lowest point ; he casti-
gates the attitudes of the foolish women who
were Ustening, and quotes their fooUsh comments.
The incident covers many pages of the book.
Kimberly concludes his story by saying : " And
that is why I have dipped the point of my golden
knife in the preserves which the Kanaka virgins
had prepared, in honour of a betrothal, such as
our century, ignorant of beauty, never saw the
Uke of in splendour and magnificence."

After the dinner, Kimberly goes from group
to group asking : " Have you drunk of the milk
of the fisher-weasel ? Oh ! Drink the milk of
the fisher-weasel. . . . It is so ravishing ! "

We see here the Oscar Wilde as he was at
first during that scene which is described by
Jean Joseph-Renaud. But, unUke as on that
occasion, he was unconscious of the effect that
he was producing.

We find also in " The Story of an Unhappy

345

The Life of Oscar WUde

Friendship " that the author^ who was one of
Oscar Wilde's oldest friends^ visiting him in
January of 1895^ detected a surprising change
in him both physically and mentally. This is
the passage referred to : — " It was at Christmas
that I met him last, before the catastrophe of
1895, and my impression was altogether a pain-
ful one. He was not the friend I had known
y and admired for so many years. I dined vlth
him at Tite Street : for once there was no
pleasure, but distress rather, in the occasion.
He looked bloated. His face seemed to have
lost its spiritual beauty, and was oozing with
material prosperity. And his conversation also
was not agreeable. I concluded that too much
good living, and too much success had momen-
tarily affected him both morally and physically.
There is an American slang-phrase which exactly
describes the impression that he produced upon
me. He seemed to be suffering from a swgUfia
head." ^.lU^^

346

CHAPTER XV

A Sagactons and Benevolent Autocrat — How he could have
saved Oacar Wilde— The Advantages of the Bastille—
Restraint at Last — Under what Circumstances — ^The Un-
consciousneBS Displayed — Oscar Wilde's Graphology —
Isabella, Baroness of Ungem-Stemberg — Her Reading
ci his Character — ^The Sister of Nietzsche — Wilde's Mental
Recovery in Prison — Oscar Wilde released on Bail —
Hunted from House to House — ^Takes Refuge with his
Mother— His Position— The Sale at Oakley Street—
"Salome "—His Bearing before the Tnal—Abyssus
Ahystum Invocat — ^The End — Silence Above, Clamonr
Bekm.

When one contemplates the spectacle afforded
by this man of genius^ endowed with gifts which
made for the pride and joy of the nation^ and
which in this sense were part of the imperial
inheritance, it must fill many with regret that
we do not Uve in England under the sway of a
sagacious and benevolent autocrat. If, as, from
the evidence that is now before us, appears
patent, there were times in Oscar Wilde's life
when his conduct, his utterances, his demeanour
must have revealed to any but the most super-
ficial observer that the man was not entirely
responsible at certain periods and under certain
influences, what a subject for regret it must

347

The Life of Oscar Wilde

ever be that no authority there was which^ able
to disregard the democratic clamour of the ab-
solute right of man to complete personal liberty^
could have imposed upon him a necessary
wholesome and politic restraint. Had Louis
XIV. been living as autocrat of England, or even
Napoleon, and had there raised itself in the
centre of London a beneficent Bastille, what
grander use could there ever have been for the
discreet lettre de cachet, which for a time would
have put the man under that salutary restraint,
which afterwards, under tragic circumstances,
worked in his whole organism a reformation so
^>^astonishing and so splendid ! But alas, we live
under a democratic government, with all the
incoherences which must proceed from the
association of two ideas — democracy and govern-
ment— so antagonistic. We profess such re-
spect for the Uberty of the individual that we
complacently look on at the antics of the partially
demented until some act is conunitted which
puts him within the grasp of the law. We then
punish him for a crime which is our own, and,
accomplices before the fact, we force him to
bear the responsibility which is entirely ours.
It is painfully illogical, but where the mob is
y allowed to interfere in matters of government

nothing else is to be expected.

^•^

The Life of Oscar Wilde

In Oscar Wilde's case things happened as
they do happen in democratic governments.
His intermittent insanity, stimulated by the
worst influences, led him to acts which at last
enabled the authorities to move; and that re-
straint was put upon him which applied in
another fashion would have preserved to Eng-
land one of the men most fitted to serve her in
the field of intellectual deUght. The criminal
law interfered at last, and great scandal was
thereby caused, which could have been avoided
by a Monsieur de Sartine, or other Public Inter-
f erer, acting in the general interests of the public
and the private interests of the man, if our
commonsense allowed of the emplojonent of an
official so useful.

Various causes contributed to the gust of
horror by which the unhappy man, after these
exposures, was swept over into the bottomless
abyss. For centuries past the promptings of his
insanity have been invested in the public mind,
at least as far as England and her English-speak-
ing colonies are concerned, with all the dread
that acts of sacrilege inspire. When in the reign
of Queen Elizabeth the secular courts took over
from the ecclesiastical tribunals the estimate of
criminality and the punishment of offenders,
there were thus transmitted for all their rigours

349

The Life of Oscar Wilde

three classes of offence, for which the Church
had a special designation, not to be heard by
ears poUte. Of these heresy was one, and usury
another. We have lived down the horror that
heresy used to inspire, and we no longer — ^those
of us who are of the Established Church — desire
to see Non-Conformist Ministers burned at any
stake ; and as to usury, which term covers
banking and other financial operations, we have
grown in England to look upon the pursuit of
this as one of the most desirable and respectable
professions that a man can follow. Yet in the
times of Queen Elizabeth the practice of hetero-
doxy and such financial methods as flourish to-
day were acts of sacrilege, and inspired people
with the horror of such. The hatred which
suddenly blazed forth against Wilde in the
masses of the people proceeded from this in-
stinctive horror of sacrilegious acts. One must
go back to the Middle Ages, to the times when
the odium theohgicum burned most fiercely, to
find any such outl»ieak of pubHc indignation
against a single man. Contributory causes were
the detestation in which society held the writer
who had so mercilessly exposed its follies, pre-
tences and vices ; the long-harboured rancour
of the Calvinists to whom Wilde had given
mortal offence by his audacity in teaching that

3SO

The Life of Oscar Wilde

life was a very good thing, that the world was
full of pleastires, and that the man Uved most
wisely who most enjoyed all the good things
that human existence can aiford ; the personal
enmity of a great number of people, provoked
by a variety of motives, none honourable, nor
worthy, but all human. Amongst the indifferent
the satisfaction at the man's removal was akin
to that which the owl of whom Gray writes in
his Elegy may have felt when its complaints to
the moon had been heard, and the cause of them
had been suppressed. There is much of the
moping owl iji a large section of our stolid
Britishry, and people of that category dislike
nothing more intensely than the man of radio-
activity who bustles into the stagnant area of
their gelid dulness, and interferes with their
somnolent eupepsia. To be forced to think, to
be forced to laugh, to be taught things, in one
word to be interfered with. No ! No ! NO !
Away with him ! In the official classes, the
judicial and police authorities, the feehng against
the man was one of intense exasperation at his
folly in provoking an inquiry. An official of
the Home Office said at the time : " There are
on the books at Scotland Yard upwards of
20,000 persons belonging to the better classes in
London alone, who are watched by the police.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

but who are not interfered with because they
do not themselves provoke investigation."

The spectacle of men dealing out what it
pleases them to call justice is at no time an
inspiriting one. The simian grotesqueness of
man never more clearly nor burlesquely mani-
fests itself than in those attitudes which he
considers the fullest of dignity, and in those
functions in which he feels that he is raising
himself above the very low level on which
Creation has placed him. It does not come
within the province of this book to record other-
wise than in the most perfunctory manner these
repulsive proceedings. The attitude of the
accused man is, however, of psychological in-
terest, and it will be necessary to follow him to
some extent through the period where Law and
Justice were — to use one of their stock phrases
— " dealing with him."

"-Bring -One night close upon intoxication, and
being urged on by a person, who had a great and
pernicious influence with him, Oscar Wilde in
March 1895 laid an information for criminal
libel against the Marquess of Queensberry. That
he was irresponsible at the time when he com-
mitted what the National Dictionary of Bio-
graphy calls an '" act of fatal insolence," is very
clearly shown by his own appreciation of his

352

The Life of Oscar Wilde

conduct^ when a healthy rigime had once more
triumphed over his insanity. In " De Pro-
fondis " we find the following passage referring
to this act : — " The one disgraceful^ unpardon-
able, and to all time contemptible action of my
life was to allow myself to appeal to society for
help and protection. To have made such an
appeal would have been from the individualist
point of view bad enough, but what excuse can
there ever be put forward for having made it ?
Of course, once I had put into motion the forces
of society, society turned on me and said,
' Have you been living all this time in defiance
of my laws, and do you now appeal to these laws,
for protection ? You shall have those laws exer-
cised to the full. You shall abide by what you
have appealed to.' The result is I am in gaol.
Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by
such ignoble instruments, as I did."

The case against the Marquess of Queensberry
commenced at the Old Bailey in the first week
of April. Oscar Wilde, the prosecutor, goes
down to the court in a brougham with two
horses and liveried servants. His psychopathia
was at this moment perilously tending towards
megalomania and what that portends. His ar-
rogance was superb ; and from its resoiu-ces he
drew the wonderful energy and mental activity
z 353

The Life of Oscar Wilde

with M^ch he faced the long cross-examination
to which he was put by Edward Carson. Though
he talked in such a way as to appal the simple
citizens who sat in the jury-box, yet his evident
superiority in the tourney was so great that by
sheer force of his personaUty and genius he
might have carried the day, but for that fatal
, slip which, occurring at the very end of the en-
""counter, and just as the advocate was about to
sit down, brought the whole edifice tumbling
about his head. That evening it was communi-
cated to him in a circuitous fashion, but with too
apparent expUcitness, that his wisest course
would be to leave the country. He refused to
flee. The next day the prosecution broke down,
and a verdict of acquittal was pronounced in
favour of the Marquess. Steps were immediately
taken to secure the arrest of the prosecutor, but
such delays occurred, or were purposely allowed
to occur, that the warrant was not executed till
late in the evening. Oscar Wilde had spent
that afternoon in a private sitting-room at a
hotel, smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky and
soda, and reading now the Yellow Book, and now
the evening papers. He evinced neither dis-
may nor trepidation when the ofi&cers entered
the room, and on aUghting from the cab at Scot-
land Yard he had a courteous discussion with

354

The Life of Oscar Wilde

one of the detectives about the payment of the
cabman. The unconsciousness displayed would
not have deceived a mental pathologist for one
moment as to his mental state and consequent
irresponsibiUty.

Arrested on 5th April, and lodged in HoUoway
on the following day, he spent nineteen da3rs in
IMfison before he was brought to trial at the Old
Bailey. During that period he largely recovered
his sanity. His physique was still in an abnor-
mal condition, as the writing of some of his
letters shows. It is the writing of a neuropath.
In the number for March -April 1905 of the
Graphohgische Monatshefte, pubHshed in Munich,
there appeared a study of Oscar Wilde's char-
acter, as revealed by his handwriting, from the
pen of a very distinguished Russian lady, the
Baroness Isabella von Ungem-Stemberg of
Revel. Madame d'Ungem-Stemberg is the
Vice-Presidentess of the Paris Graphological
Society, and the study is a purely scientific one.
It is worthy of the attention of all those who
wish to provide themselves with every possible
means of arriving at a solution of the formidable
problem of Oscar Wilde's mentality. The three
pieces of his writing on which she based her
study were three letters. Of these, one was
written in 1883 to a friend, just after Wilde's

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The Life of Oscar WUde

departure from Paris, the second was a letter
from HoUoway Prison, written while he was
mider remand, and the third was a note written
not long before his death. The Baroness's study
of Wilde's writing seems to have inspired her with
as great an admiration for his character as her
reading of ''Intentions" had originally roused
her enthusiasm for his talents. A very striking
sentence in her estimate of the writing declares : —

" Pathalogisches ist in Wildes Handschrift
nicht zu finden, auch nicht in der Probe Fig. 2,
sobald wir absehen von der begreiflichen Erre-
gung durch Angst und Holfnung, Krankheit und
Kraenkung."

This means that there was nothing in his
writing to reveal a pathological condition ; that
is to say when he was sane, for he does not
appear to have written during the paroxjfsms
of his dementia. The specimen referred to is
the letter from HoUoway. Here there is nothing
pathological, but at the same time the writing
shows illness. A curious incident may be re-
lated in connection with the Baronne d'Ungem-
Sternberg's essay. It so exactly tallied with the
opinion which the sister of Nietzsche had formed
of Oscar Wilde's character, from her study of
his works, and from all that she had heard and
read about him, that this distinguished lady

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

became an immediate convert to the scientific
truth of graphology.

He appears to have suffered very greatly
during this confinement. " Wilde looked care-
worn and much thinner " is what the reporters
remarked about his appearance in the Old
Bailey dock on 26th April. In the letter re-
ferred to above he had spoken of himself in the
following terms : " I am ill — apathetic. Slowly
life creeps out of me."

The trial ended in a disagreement of the jury.
Shortly afterwards Oscar Wilde was released on
bail to await a fresh trial at the next sessions.
The amount was fixed at two thousand five
hundred pounds^ of which nearly three fourths
were provided by a young nobleman, who was
but slightly acquainted with the prisoner, and
who realised almost the entire fortune at his
command to supply the money.

On leaving HoUoway Prison Wilde drove to
a hotel where rooms had been engaged for him.
As he was sitting down to dinner in his private
room the manager of the hotel came in, shouted
out that he knew who he was, and ordered him
to leave the house at once. From thence Wilde
drove to another hotel. Here he secured a
room, and dinnerless, for he had no appetite
left, was about to go to bed, when again he was

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

driven forth into the streets. Some men, it
appeared, had followed him from the gates of
HoUoway Prison — ^at whose instigation we need
not inquire — ^and had determined that he should
nowhere find shelter that night. They had
threatened the manager of the second hotel
that if he did not turn Oscar Wilde away they
would wreck his house.

He appears to have been refused admission,
having been recognised, at other London hostel-
ries that night. In the end he turned his
thoughts towards his mother's home. Long
past midnight his brother Willy heard a knock
at the door of the house in Oakley Street. When
he had opened the door, Oscar Wilde, pale as
death, dishevelled, unnerved, staggered into the
narrow hall, and sinking exhausted on to a chair
cried out : " Willy, give me a shelter or I shall
die in the streets.''

Willy Wilde frequently related the incident
afterwards, but with a mixing of metaphors
which sufficiently indicates the condition into
which he was passing.

" He came," he used to say, " tapping with

his beak against the window-pane, and fell down

on my threshold Uke a wounded stag." To the

"horrors of that period of waiting the touch of the

grotesque was not to be wanting.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

He was entirely ruined, if such an expression
may be applied to a man who had but to sit
down and write in order to earn money. He
had no money ; his -home had been sold up ;
of personal property he had nothing more than
the few clothes and trinkets which he brought
with him to Oakley Street. For on his arrest the
usual had happened. Creditors rushed clamor-
ously to precipitate his downfall. Judgments
were " signed/' and executions " put in." On
the day of the sale the house in Tite Street
was invaded by a motley crowd, amongst which
the genuine purchasers were few, the prurient
sensation-mongers and the shifty-eyed thieves
were many. Many articles were stolen ; doors
were feloniously broken open. Never was such
hamesucken perpetrated before with such im-
punity. Here is the account which an Irish
publisher gives of his visit to Tite Street during
the sale: —

'' I went upstairs and found several people
in an empty room, the floor of which was strewn,
thickly strewn, with letters addressed to Oscar
mostly in their envelopes and with much of
Oscar's easily recognisable manuscript. This
looked as though the various pieces of furniture
which had been carried downstairs to be sold
had been emptied of their contents on to the

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The Life of Oscar WUde

floor. It is usual at sales^ of course, for the
furniture to be sold in each room as it stands.
After I had been in the room some time, a
broker's man came up and said : * How did you
get into this room ? What business have you
in this room ? ' I said : * The door was open
and I walked in/ Then the man said : * Then
somebody has broken open the lock, because I
locked the door myself/ " It was no doubt from
this room that various of Oscar's manuscripts
which have never been recovered were stolen.
There were the scenarios of one or two comedies ;
a whole poetic drama, " The Woman Covered
With Jewels," and the manuscript of a work
entitled " The Incomparable and Ingenious
History of Mr W. H. Being the True Secret of
Shakespeare's Sonnets, Now for the First Time
here Fully Set Forth/' This manuscript had
been in the hands of Messrs EUdn Mathews &
John Lane, who had already some time previ-
ously announced it as being in preparation. On
the day of Oscar Wilde's arrest, the manuscript
was returned to his house. Nothing has ever
been heard of it again. Certainly after Oscar
Wilde's arrest there was no more opening for
a work which was to estabUsh that it was under
the influence of an absorbing adoration for Bfr
W. H. that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets. It

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

is the only thing that Oscar ever wrote in which
he daUied with the abnormal ; and^ perhaps^ for
his reputation amongst the majority it is as
well that instead of seeing the Ught of day this
work is resting in the innermost recesses of the
Cupboard of Poisons of some rich hterary dilet-
tant. In Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for
July 1889 there appeared an article by Oscar
Wilde entitled " The Portrait of Mr W. H./' in
which he only very faintly indicates the theory
to which he was to give such a development in
the longer work. It was to form a piece of
documentary evidence in support of his plea of
the dignity^ beauty, and advantages of those
warm friendships between men, which he uttered
in the witness-box at the Old Bailey amidst the
moved silence even of his enemies.

The sale at Tite Street was not a sale ; it was
the pillage of an unprotected house. People
stole with the greatest effrontery. The prices
realised for such articles as did come to the
hanuner were ridiculously low. " There was a
fine Whistler there/' said the Irish gentleman
referred to above, *' the picture of a girl, with
the butterfly signature. I wanted to buy it.
But the crowd in the room was so dense that one
could not move, and I was unable to bid. It was
knocked down for six pounds."

S6i

The Life of Oscar Wilde

From his pla3rs there was nothing to be hoped
for. His name^ immediately after his arrest,
had been effaced both on posters and pro-
; grammes ; the withdrawal of the pla}^ was only
■ a question of the time it took for the managers
\ to reconcile interest with outraged feeUngs. For
the rest, he had largely mortgaged his interests
\^ these performances. From his books there
W^ nothing to receive. The only asset that he
possessed was the play " Salom^/' which he had
written in French in 1892, and which had been
accepted for production by Madame Sarah
Bernhardt. Her intention had been to perform
it in London, but the Lord Chamberlain's Licen-
ser of Pla3rs refused to allow its performance.
It was a Biblical piece ; and in those days Mr
George Alexander and Mr Hall Caine had not
yet demonstrated the utility of the stage in
drawing the public " nearer to the Great White
Throne.'* Oscar Wilde's indignation at this re-
fusal was very great, and he spoke at the time of
leaving England and becoming a naturalised
Frenchman. If he had followed up his purpose
he would have been living now.

While he was in Holloway, having no money
for the piuposes of his defence, he communicated
through a friend with Madame Bernhardt offer-
ing to sell her the rights in '' Salom^ " for a lump

$62

The Life of Oscar Wilde

sum. The figure he mentioned was about the
sixth part of what that poetic piece has akeady
realised in royalties from Germany alone, with-
out counting the siuns which it is now producing
as libretto in Strauss's opera. Madame Bern-
hardt missed an excellent investment on this
occasion, which as her conduct in this matter
was entirely guided by business considerations
may be for her to-day the subject of some regret.
It is not to over-estimate the productiveness of
" Salom£ " to say that anyone who had pur-
chased it in 1895 for two or three thousand
pounds would have invested his money at a
thousand per cent. But, of course, Madame
Bernhardt could not foresee that. She shed
tears over Oscar Wilde's painful position, she
sent him messages of sympathy, and she refused
to assist him financially in any way. But for
the generosity of Sir Edward Clarke in under-
taking to defend him at the Old Bailey without
a fee, it seems certain that Oscar Wilde would
have been abandoned to the usual resources of
poor prisoners. He had come to that : he was
a poor prisoner : he might have been the bene-
ficiary of an eleemosynary Old Bailey *'soup."
Sir Edward Clarke's sympathy with artists is
notoriously not a great one ; he was the only
man in London who refused to sign the petition

$6$

The Life of Oscar WUde

that the great Sir Henry Irving should be buried
in Westminster Abbey ; and this in spite of the
fact that they had been schoolfellows together.
His principles and convictions must have been
outraged by the principles and theories of Oscar
Wilde (who, of course, had no convictions) yet
he very generously undertook to defend him
without remuneration.

His friends had, of course, abandoned him.
The usual had taken place. It is foolish to ex-
pect exceptional conduct from the average.
There had been the usual denials. The Atlantic
cable was used by one person in his eager haste
to repudiate the fallen man and his many ob-
ligations to him. The actors took their revenge
for that stinging remark about " the source of
danger.'* Every door was shut upon the un-
happy man. This was, perhaps, what a£Sicted
him most. In his terrible awakening what sur-
prised and distressed him beyond anything else
was that " people to whom he had been kind,
and nothing but kind, should turn upon him."
There were, equally, of course, a few catsrHsans de
la demure heure. A man of such charm, such
generosity and goodness could not but have
friends who preferred him in disgrace and shame
and peril to the people who turned their backs
upon him. There were a few who would gladly

364

The Life of Oscar Wilde

have gone to prison in his steady would gladly
have died for him. This is no hyperbole. More
than one man since his downfall and ruin did
die by his own hand^ because he could not
survive Oscar Wilde's catastrophe. More than
a score of men are (dragging out a broken Ufe,
who had not the courage to put an end to suffer-
ings to which time can bring no surcease. It
will not be necessary to say that the " R. " of
" De Profundis/' to whom Oscar Wilde pa)^ a
beautiful tribute in that book^ a tribute worthy
of the man's beautiful conduct, was loyal then
as ever. And there were two or three others.

During the period that he spent in Oakley
Street, while on bail, Oscar Wilde seemed to
have entirely recovered his sanity of mind. His
physical condition vras however deplorable. His
nerves were wrecked. He was in fever all the
time. He was paying his debt to Nature for
3rears of indulgence. He was consumed with
burning thirst. One of his friends was running
out aU day to fetch soda-water and lemonade
for him. He drank gallons of liquid in the
twenty-four hours. His moral attitude was
splendid. He had made up his mind to face
the worst. The advisabihty of flight was urged
upon him by one of his friends. He refused to.
listen to the suggestion. It appears that Lady

365

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Wilde had said that if he left the country she
would never speak to him again ; but it is certain
that the son of Speranza had never seriously
entertained the project of showing his heels to a
Sassenach judge and gaoler. His brother Willy
was almost melodramatic in his protestations
that a Wilde would not flee. " He is an Irish
gentleman, and he will face the music/' was
what he used to repeat with almost tedious in-
sistence. One day he announced that he had
decided to sell his Ubrary in order to find the
funds for sending back to France the particular
friend who was the advocate of a discreet
evanishment, for he entertained the idea that
the reason why that friend did not return home
was that he had not the means to do so. By a
curious coincidence one of the very few books
which constituted the " library '* was a copy of
the essays of that Montaigne, whose remark,
** Were I to be accused of stealing the towers
of Notre Dame the first thing I should do would
be to put the frontier between myself and the
gens de la justice,'' was being quoted in support
of his advice by the friend whose removal he
de^red. It is very certain that Willy Wilde
felt strongly that the honour of the family would
be compromised by Oscar's flight. A young
Irish poet relates that visiting Oakley Street

366

The Life of Oscar Wilde

during that period " Willy came theatrically
into the room and said : ' Who are you ? What
do you want ? ' I told him who I was/* he
sa3^, '' and added that I had a note for Oscar
Wilde. Willy then asked, ' Are you urging him
to flee ? Because if you are, I won't let him
have the note/ "

" I think," the Irish poet has said since^
"that the whole family — Irish pride being
aroused — ^felt that the cowardice of running
away would be a far greater disgrace than the
disgrace of a conviction and imprisonment.
For the rest," he adds, " prison does not seem
such a chsgrace in Ireland, and that for historical
associations."

Oscar Wilde's bearing on the night before the
last day of his second trial, in the supreme (^

moments of his Uberty, filled all those who saw
him with respect and admiration. His serenity ^ ^
had returned to him. His sweet, gentle dignity
had clothed him anew. The tragic horror of the
moment had aroused in him the perfect man-
liness that periods had lulled into apathetic
quiescence. He took farewell of his friends ;
he informed each one of a little gift, from the
poor trinkets which remained to him, which he
had destined as a souvenir in case he did not
return home on the morrow. It is very certain

367

The Life of Oscar WUde

that at that moment he felt that if a conviction
ensued he would never see any of his fri^ids
again ; that he felt that he was being tried for
his life^ and that prison would speedily kill him.
He retired early from the mournful gathering^
saluting by kissing her hand with stately courtli-
ness^ his brother's wife^ whose kindness and
sympathy had deeply touched his heart. He
spent, before he sought his sleepless couch, a long
hour with the mother, deeply loved and deeply
honoured, whom he was never to see again.

Late in the afternoon of the following day,
Saturday, 25th May 1895, Oscar Wilde was
found guilty and sentenced to two years hard
labour. There had been six counts against him.
He was asked after his release by a very old
friend as to the justice of the finding, and he
said : '' Five of the counts referred to matters
with which I had absolutely nothing to do.
There was some foundation for on^ of the
counts." " But then why," asked his friend,
" did you not instruct your defenders ? " " That
would have meant betraying a friend," said
Oscar. Circumstances which have since tran-
spired have estabUshed — ^what for the rest was
never in doubt in the minds of those who heard
it made — ^the absolute truth of this statement.

When the verdict became known outside the

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

court, a foul rabble, believing that an aristocrat
had been condenmed, filled the Old Bailey with
shouts of delight. Men and women joined hands,
and a clumsy saraband was danced. Cruelty,
the lascivia di sangue, glutted itself. There was
a peculiar irony in this blood-lust which every-
where in England found expression, for, as the
pathologists afl&rm, it is a morbid manifestation
very directly akin to the aberration to which
the prisoner had fallen a victim. From evil,
evil is bred. Abyssus abyssum invocat.

The question presented itself to many :
Where was our national regard for Jesus Christ
as we exulted in the downfall and misery of the
man whom we had punished ? The clergy held
their tongues. The Church had nothing to say.
The doctors, the men of science, the patholo-
gists, the students and masters of psychology,
who could have shown that the man was irre-
sponsible : they were all mute. On the heights
there was neither soimd nor motion : in the
depths males and females shouted and danced
for gladness.

What ripples of mocking laughter must run
through Olympus if ever the careless gods from
their lofty seats do deign to look down upon the
world and see what men we are and what are
the things we do.

2 A 369

CHAPTER XVI

Oscar ¥^de in Priaon— -The Effect of the Simple life — ^A
Spleadid Renovation — " De Profundis *'— The Sfnoerity
of the Book — ^How Religion came to ¥^de— The Scientific
Explanation of the Phenomenon — ^A Quotation from
" The Tree of Life "—Oscar ¥^de Visited by his Wife —
Constance ¥^de — ^Why the Reconciliation never took
EfiEect — Oscar V^de as a Hnsband and a Father— The
Testimony of Ernest La Jennesse — A Prison Conversatioa
— Oscar ¥^lde's Views on Religion — The Impression he
produced in Prison — ^Described as a Saint.

In Wandsworth Prison first and then in Reading
Gaol, Oscar Wilde's mental development reached
a point of transcendency to which never in the
world of men he could have hoped to attain.
There had been forced upon him the recluse life
which has raised many men in the world's
history towards the stars^ but which, perhaps^
never before demonstrated its reforming and
enhancing powers in a manner more magnificent^
more orbicular, more triumphant. In the old
days he had tried to imitate Balzac in his mode
of Ufe ; but Society and Pleasure had ever
knocked at the door of his cell, nor had he had
the strength of will great enough to resist their
allurements. Now there were iron bars between

370

The Life of Oscar Wilde

him and the wasteful pleasures of the world ;
a claustration^ as strict if less severe than that
which Balzac imposed upon himself, held him^-
fast, and he had the time to think. He had the
time to think, and with a brain which at lastliad^
recovered its splendid normal power. The prison
rigime, the enforced temperance in food, the
enforced abstinence from all narcotic drugs and
drink, the regular hours, the periodical exercise :
the simple life, in one word, had restored to him
the splendid heritage that he had received from
Nature. What the real Oscar Wilde was, and of
what he was capable were now to be made
patent. In "De Profundis" he laid his soul
bare, and the impartial are to judge from that
book of the man's new powers, as a thinker
and as a literary artist. His friends will ask no
more than that, reserving to themselves the high
delight of taking a holy joy in the lofty virtues
which that book reveals, the kindness, the
patience, the resignation, the forgiveness of sins,
so splendid that one may almost believe that in
his ardent meditations on Christ, he was able
to bring the Bodily Presence of the God who
taught these things into his cell, and to learn
from the divine Ups themselves what is the true
secret of human happiness. In the ensuing
chapter we have from the pen of a man who saw

371

The Life of Oscar WUdc

him day by day in prison a description of him
which shows that he put into hourly practice
the lessons he had learned. Critics abroad have
said that '' there is too much about Christ " in
" De Profundis/' overlooking the fact that the
book is from first page to last inspired by Christ,
that no man who had not found Christ could
have written that book, nor lived as the man
who wrote it did live. In England one heard it
said that it is absiu-d to believe that an agnostic,
a sensualist would turn to religion, and the
blasphemous statement has been made that this
book is in its way no more sincere than the djmig
confessions of many prison-cells, the greasy cant
that officious chaplains win from fawning
prisoners 1 One has heard the word HYPO-
CRISY pronounced ! It is a thousand pities
that people are placed by common consent in
places of authority and allowed to pronounce
opinions, who from a total absence of scientific
training, are utterly imcompetent to opine and
unworthy to pronounce. It is an elementary
fact that when the mind of man either by his
own volition or by the force of exterior circum-
stances is concentrated on the bare facts of
existence it becomes religious.

'* It is also noteworthy," writes Mr Ernest
Crawley, in his remarkable and most interesting

3?a

The Life of Oscar Wilde

study of reUgion, " The Tree of Life/' " that,
while the over-cultured man and the abstract
thinker so often discard religion, simpler and
actually more complete souls cleave to it with
an instinctive faith. But every man, when he
happens to be brought face to face with the
eternal realities of existence. . . . becomes, ipso
facto, a religious subject/'

In " De Profundis " Oscar Wilde describes the
road by which he came from hyper-culture and
abstract thought to a simplicity and complete-
ness of soul. - — -^

In the same book may be foimd many of the
awful details of his prison life. None of the
humiliation, none of the sufferings ordained by
our prison regulations were spared to him : he,
himself, would have been the last to wish that
any exception should be made in his favour. The
first three months of his confinement in Wands-
worth Gaol were months of atrocious anguish.
He relates that the idea of suicide was at all
times with him ; the want of means wherewith
to effect his purpose alone saved his life. At
the end of this period he was seen by a friend,
who found him " greatly depressed,'' prone to
tears. His hands were disfigured, the nails werci
broken and bleeding, the face was emaciated and
irrecognisable. In the following month — ^that is

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

to say on 21st September 1895 — ^he was visited in
prison by his wife^ by special permission from
the Home Office. His appearance produced
upon the unfortunate woman an impression,
from the shock of which she never recovered.
After leaving the gaol she wrote to the friend
who had induced her to take to the prisoner the
solace of her forgiveness and love a pathetic
letter, in which imconsdously she revealed how
great her affection still was for her husband.
" It was indeed awful," she wrote, " more so
than I had conception of. I could not see him,
and I could not touch him, and I scarcely spoke."
It is in those words '* I could not touch him "
that one reads the love that still was in her ; for
to touch the cherished one is ever an instinctive
prompting. The poor woman left him, having
made up her mind, as she afterwards told the
same friend, to take him back to her after his
imprisonment was over. In the spring of the
following year, as Oscar Wilde gratefully re-
cords in " De Profundis," she travelled all the
way from Genoa to London to break to him the
terrible news of his mother's death. This was
the last time that the two met. After Oscar
Wilde's release circumstancesarose which delayed
their definite reconciliation, and then came that
which parts the tenderest spouses. Constance

374

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Wilde, who had been long ailing, and who had
never recovered from the horrible shock of the
catastrophe which shattered her home, was re-
leased, from a world so full of cruel surprise to
the simple and gentle, by death. She died in
Genoa about one year after her husband had left
prison. She was a simple, beautiful woman, too
gentle and good for the part that Uf e called upon
her to play. She was a woman of heart whom
kindlier gods would never have thrown into the
turmoil and stress of an existence which was all
a battle.

Her death was to Oscar Wilde's affectionate
heart a sorrow which accentuated his despair.
His love for her, for the very reason that it never
was a strong physical attachment, was pure, deep,
and reverent. " From a poet to a poem " is
what he once wrote in her album. This ap-
parent cynic was, in fact, endowed with all
the family virtues which men love to record of
the departed. His conduct towards his mother
is known ; and as a husband he was what he had
been as a son. These Irishmen are very wonder-
ful in their loyalty towards their own kin. He
was no friend of his brother in his lifetime, but
he never allowed anyone to say in his presence
a single word of disparagement about him. He
quarrelled with several friends who had ventured

37S

The Life of Oscar Wilde

to speak slightingly about Willy : that ten 3^ears'
quarrel with a famous Irish writer, to which re-
ference has been made, arose from no other
cause. After Willy's death his memory had a
champion in Oscar Wilde. For his children he
felt deep affection. Ernest La Jeunesse in that
masterly article which he wrote after Wilde's
death relates what a revelation it was to him
to hear Oscar speaking about his sons. It
showed a new man to him ; an Oscar Wilde
whom he had not known, of whose existence
he had never had the ]03rful comprehension.
He spoke so simply, like a good father, and with
such joy and gladness. The passage is one
which — ^in an essay that to read is pure deUght
from the beauty of the thing — ^forces tears even
from those who are reluctant to yield to such
emotions in the midst of the highest spiritual
delight. To many people who knew Oscar
Wilde well the statement of his domestic
virtues will appear unwarranted. It should be
remembered of him, however, that he took par-
ticular pains to cloak those qualities which
might cause him to be compared to the general.
A noticeable trait in his character was that al-
though he was loudly assertive of his Uterary,
artistic, and ethical principles he never spoke
about himself as a man. He had a horror of

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

anything that resembled self-aggrandisement;
and it cannot be doubted that he strove with all
his power against that habit of self-accusation
which at times was a pathetic feature of his
conversation; because to speak evil of oneself
even appears to the h}^rcritical and uncharit-
able only a subtle form o^ self-adulation.

In spite of the stringent prison regulations he
appears to have had many opportunities for con-
versation^ and records of such conversations have
been jealously preserved. At the time when he
was writing " De Profundis " he had one after-
noon a long talk with a man in Reading Gaol^
who, writing from memory, supplies for the
purpose of this biography the following account
ofit:—

" We had been talking of Robert Emmet,
when I incidentally remarked that it was curious
that he an atheist should have made so many
allusions to the Supreme Being and a future
state in the course of his speech from the dock.

" ' That was no doubt due to his Celtic tem-
perament,' said Oscar Wilde. ' Those who are
governed by their emotions are more given to
hero-worship and the worship of the gods than
practical people who beUeve in logic and are
governed by what they choose to term their
reason. Imaginative people will invariably be

377

The Life of Oscar Wilde

religious people for the simple reason that re-
ligion has sprung from the imagination/

" I pointed out that Shelley and Voltaire were
highly imaginative people and were sceptics.

" ' Of course/ he repUed, * we must allow for
exceptions. I am one myself, but it is an open
question whether the two poets you mention
were unbehevers or simply agnostics. Besides^
one's reUgious opinions are often greatly influ-
enced by private and local events or national
contingencies. I daresay the oppression of
Church and State on the poor in France was the
direct cause of Voltaire's apostasy.'

" ' And may have led to yours,' I ventured
to say.

" He remained silent for some time, then
stepped aside to allow a fly, which was floating
round the door, to enter his cell. ' You see,' he
observed, watching its movements, *it will be
company for me when you have gone.' I
laughed, and repeated my question.

" ' What,' he said, * was the cause of my be-
coming a man ? Remember I once was a
child.'

" ' Well,' I said hesitatingly, ' I suppose it
was natural development.'

" ' Just so,' he answered, * and the cause of
my apostasy is spiritual development, or the

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natural evolution of the mind. You will ob-
serve that the various races of the world have
various forms of supernatural beUef , and if you
examine closely into those forms you will find
they accord more or less with the racial char-
acteristics of the people who hold them. And
what is true in regard to races is equally true
when appUed to individuals^ I mean individuals
who can claim individuality — each one makes
his own God, and I have made mine. My God
might not suit you, nor your God suit me, but as
my God suits myself I wish to keep him, and
when I feel so indined to worship him.'

" ' What is your God, then ? ' I asked.
'Art?'

" * No,' he said, * Art is but the disciple, or,
perhaps, I should say the Apostle. It was
through Art I discovered him, and it is through
Art I worship him. Christ, to me, is the one
supreme Artist, and not one of the brush, or
the pen, but, what is more rare, he was an
Artist in words. It was by the voice he fotmd
expression — ^that's what the voice is for, but
few can find it by that medium, and none in the
manner bom of Christ.'

" ' If we acknowledge the divinity of Christ,'
said I, ' neither his words nor his books, his
fastings nor his final sufferings should excite our

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admiration any more than the strength of the
elephant or the fieetness of the deer. If we al-
low he was a supernatural beings gifted with
miraculous power, his sufierings became a iarce ;
they resemble a miUionaire choosing to suffer
the pangs of hunger in the midst of plenty, or
the fanatic who deliberately inflicts pain on his
body for the purification of his sotd/

"'The divinity of Christ/ said he, 'in its
generally accepted sense, I, of course, do not
believe, but I see no difficulty whatever in believ-
ing that he was as far above the people around
him as though he had been an angel sitting on
the clouds/ (Here followed a panegyric of
Christ something similar to that drawn in " De
Profundis.")

" On another occasion when speaking on the
same subject I wished to know which label I
would present him with, supposing I had a
btmdle containing the names of the world's
reUgions and non-reUgions, and to say 'Take
this it fits you/

" He smiled and said he would not accept
any one of them. ' This,' he said, touching
the round piece of cardboard on his coat,
" indicates my address, or rather the number of
my room, and does so correctly, I daresay.
But you couldn't find a card in your supposi*

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

titious bundle that would correspond with my
religion/

" ' Yours is a unique creed, then/ I responded,
' why not explain its tenets and you may make
a convert ? '

" * I do not want any converts/ he replied,
' the moment I discovered that anyone else
shared my belief I would flee from it, I must
either have it all to myself or not at all/

" ' Selfish man f ' I cried.

" ' To be a supreme Artist,' said he, * one must
first be a supreme IndividuaUst/

" ' You talk of Art,' said I, ' as though there
were nothing else in the world worth living for/

" * For me,' said he sadly, ' there is nothing
else/

" ' Do you know,' he said suddenly, * the Bible
is a wonderftil book. How beautifully artistic
the little stories are ! Adam and his wife alone
in the beautiful garden, where they could have
enjoyed all the pleasures of Ufe by simply obeying
the laws. But he refuses to become a machine,
and so eats the apple — I, also, would have eaten
that apple — and in consequence is expelled/

" * Then, young Joseph sold into Egypt as a
slave, when he blossoms out as the ruler of a
kingdom, and his subterfuge to obtain his
brother. In nearly every chapter you can find

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something so intensely interesting that one
pauses to wonder how it all came to be written.
The Psalms of David ; the Song of Solomon —
how grand it is ! — ^And the story of Daniel ; all
appeal to me as a lover of language, and as a
lover of Art. And if I am delighted with the
Old Testament imagery I am charmed with the
New- Christ, Paul, and most of the other char-
acters iii the book have for me a singular fas-
cination. Then take the last book of all. How
powerful must have been the imagination of the
writer f Why, I know of nothing in the whole
world of Art to compare with it, especially those
tenth, eleventh and twelfth chapters. Really,
I have no sympathy with stupid people who
cannot admire a book unless they believe in its
Uteral truth.'

'* I reminded him that the leading agnostics
of the century had paid tribute to the beauty of
the scriptures, and mentioned Renan, Huxley
and IngersoU.

" * I very much admire,' he said, * Kenan's
" Life of Jesus " ; and Huxley had a captivating
style which is seldom to be met with in men of
science, for instance, I remember reading where
he said " that one could #not be a true soldier
of science and a soldier of the Cross," and I
thought it a very fine sentence, although I did

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

not believe it, for between matter of fact and
matter of faith there is a wide gulf which science
cannot bridge.'

" * When I go out from here I should like to
find a quiet, nice Uttle Church, I shouldn't in the
least mind what its denomination was so long as
it had a nice, simple-minded and good-hearted
clergyman, one who had reUgion within himself
and did not preach somebody else's opinions
and practise somebody else's formulas, a man
who thought of the sinner more than the stipend.
I can never belong to any of the conventional
forms of reUgion, but I should Uke to be able to
extract the good there may be in all.' "

In " De Profundis " we have Wilde's own
account of his prison and, of what it meant to
him. In the following chapter we have an ob-
jective description of his Ufe there. The
warder's account of his character as it displayed
itself in prison is confirmed by many witnesses.
The man appeared to all who beheld him in
prison as the beau idSal of the Christian gentle-
man. It is on record that on the night of his
departure many of the wretched prisoners in
Reading Gaol were rebuked and even punished
for the loudness of their lamentations. One of
these men said after his release, that when C. 3.3.
went, his last hope seemed to have abandoned

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him. His S5mipathy for his fellow-prisoners was
so great that he often risked severe punishment
in order to give to this one or to that the com-
fort of his consolations. Some of the notes
which he wrote while in prison to fellow-prisoners
are still in existence^ and some have fomid their
way into the market for curiosities. De Mon-
taigne's remark is here appUcable once more.
There have been people who have seen in these
notes, words of encouragement for the most
part, the most evil meanings. His S3mipathy
went beyond mere words. Through his friends
he was enabled to help with money many of his
fellow-prisoners, who, leaving the gaol destitute,
would otherwise have fallen inmiediatdy back
into crime. While he was in Reading Gaol some
lads, mere children, were committed to prison
for snaring rabbits. The magistrates had given
these hardened poachers the option of paying
fines, and it was with his money that Oscar
Wilde enabled them to gain their freedom. After
his release he befriended several of those whose
acquaintance he had made in prison. Although
he spoke of himself as an agnostic in gaol, as
is recorded in the conversation above, he showed
by his conduct that Christianity had altogether
taken possession of him. The singular sweet-
ness and charm of his manners after he came

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out of prison^ his tolerance^ his gentleness, his
entire self-effacement, impressed all those who
came near him. The warder whose story now
follows says of Oscar Wilde that in prison he
appeared a saint. So, too, he appeared to many
who saw him during the few months after his
release, until fatality had driven him back to
companionships in the atmosphere of which
nothing that was good or noble could subsist.

a B .385

CHAPTER XVII

THE POET IN PRISON^

(Written by one of the warders in Readit^ Goat)

There are supreme moments in the lives of men^
as there are events in the histories of nations^
which mark epochs and stand out in bold relief
from the many others which go to make up the
sum-total of their existence. Those moments in
the Uf e of Mr Wilde were when he stepped out of
the dock at the Old Bailey, a ruined man, and
with a sentence of two years' imprisonment
hanging over his unfortunate head.

There are days, months, and years in the lives
of some men which to them are an eternity ; for
them the hand of Time has ceased to move;
the dock no longer strikes the recurring hour ;
for them there is no dawn ; there is no day —

^ This chapter has been coatributed to this biography by a
man who was a warder in Reading Gaol at the time of Oscar
Wilde's imprisonment there. The express condition under
which it was contributed was that it shoold be printed exactly
as it stood in the manuscript^ with no alteration of a single
phrase or word or expression. This condition has been fgdth-
fully observed, and the chapter has been printed as it was
writteni

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

occasionally, perhaps, a twilight, for, as the
adage has it, '* Hope springs eternal in the
human breast " ; — they live through one long,
bewildering night — a night of terror, a night of
appalling darkness, unrelieved by a single star ;
a night of misery, a night of despair !

Two years' imprisonment meant to the Poet
one long, dreary night — a night spent in an In-
ferno, anight without variation, a night without
dreams: no dreams, but nightmares, rendered
the more ghastly because of their terrible reality.
— From them there was no awakening. — Night-
mares wherein men were flogged ! wherein men
were executed 1

Others, it may be urged, have been in prison
before the Poet ; others since and others now-
Ah, yes ! but they were not poets, they are not
poets, in the sense he was. Their sufferings, no
doubt, are great, but his were greater. Reared
in the lap of luxury, Uving in aq atmosphere
of culture and refinement, he, the Apostle of
iEsthetidsm, was suddenly hurled from the
proud pinnacle on which his genius had placed
him, and, without passing through any inter-
mediate stage, found himself encased amid walls
of iron and surrounded by bars of steel. He
who formerly devoted himself to the producing
of the highest works of Art, was now shredding

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

tarred ropes in a dismal cell. He, with a poet's
weakness for adornment, was now attired in the
garb of gloomy grey, taken from a prison ward-
robe. He, to whom expression was Kfe — ^nay,
more than Ufe itself — ^was suddenly reduced to
a silence more silent than the grave ; and he
who had made a name, glorious in the world of
literature, had now only a number. His was
worse than suffering; his was a tragedy, and
one of the greatest that the nineteenth cen-
tury has to record.

For the first eighteen months of his im-
prisonment all the rigours of the system were
appUed to him relentlessly. He had :to pick
his quantity of oakmn, or bear the punishment
that was sure to f oUow ; turn the monotonous
crank, along with his feUows, by which the
prison was suppUed with water ; read the silly
books from the Ubrary, or pace his ceU, a prey
to his own sad thoughts, imtil his health broke
down under the unnatural strain, and, to prevent
his being sent to a madhouse, he was allowed
the privilege of having a Umited number of books,
which were sent by friends, and which afterwards
found a place amongst others less abstruse on
the shelves of the prison Ubrary.

Later he was allowed a more important
privilege — ^the privilege of writing — and to this

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The Life of Oscar WUde

concession the world owes " De Profundis."
He wrote mostly in the evenings, when he knew
he would be undisturbed. In his cell were two
wooden trestles, across which he placed his
plank bed. This was his table, and, as he him-
self observed : " It was a very good table, too."

His tins he kept scrupulously clean ; and in the
mornings, after he had arranged them in their
regulated order,. he would step back, and view
them with an air of child-Uke complacency.

He was dreadfully distressed because he could
not polish his shoes or brush his hair. " If I
could but feel clean," he said, " I should not feel
so utterly miserable. These awful bristles " —
touching his chin — '* are horrid." Before leav-
ing his cell to see a visitor he was always careful
to conceal, as far as possible, his unshaven chin
by means of his red handkerchief. He showed
great agitation when a visitor was announced.
" For I never know," he said, " what fresh
sorrow may not have entered my life, and is, in
this manner, borne to me, so that I may carry
it to my cell, and place it in my already over-
stocked storehouse, which is my heart. My
heart is my storehouse of sorrow ! "

It was during the latter part of the Poet's
imprisonment that the order was issued for
"first offenders" to be kept apart from the

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other prisoners. They were distinguished by
two red stars^ one of which was on the jacket
and the other worn on the cap^ and in conse-
quence were known as " Star-class men." The
order, not being retrospective, did not apply to
the Poet, and in consequence he, like the re-
mainder, had to stand with his face to the wall
when any of the '' star-class " were passing in
his vicinity. The framers of the order were, no
doubt, actuated by the best of motives, but its
too literal interpretation caused it to look rather
ludicrous. I have seen the Poet having to
stand with his face to the wall while a villainous-
looking ruffian, who had been convicted for half
killing his poor wife, passed him. In fact,
nearly every day he was forced to assume
this undignified position, which might have
been obviated but for the crass stupidity of
officialdom.

In Church the Poet seemed to suffer from
ennui. He sat in a listiess attitude with his
elbow resting on the back of his chair, his legs
crossed, and gazed dreamily around him and
above him.

There were times when he was so oblivious of
his surroundings, so lost in reverie, that it re-
quired a friendly " nudge ** frt>m one of the
*^ lost sheep " beside him to remind him that a

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

hymn had been given out^ and that he must rise
and sing^ or at least appear to sing^ his praises
unto God.

When the Chaplain was addressing his shorn
and grey-garbed flock^ telling them how wicked
they all were^ and how thankful they should all
be that they lived in a Christian country where
a paternal Government was as anxious for the
welfare of their souls as for the safe-keeping of
their miserable bodies ; that society did not wish
to punish them^ although they had erred and
sinned against society; that they were under-
going a process of purification ; that their prison
was their purgatory^ from which they could
emerge as pure and spotless as though they had
never sinned at all ; that if they did so society
would meet and welcome them with open arms ;
that they were the prodigal sons of the com-
munity^ and that the community, against which
they had previously sinned, was fattening calves
to feast them, if they would but undertake to
return to the fold and become good citi2ens, —
the Poet would smile. But not his usual smile :
this was a cynical smile, a disbelieving smile,
and often it shadowed despair. " I long to rise
in my place, and cry out,'' said he, " and tell the
poor, disinherited wretches around me that it
is not so ; to tell them that they are society's

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victims^and that society has nothing to offer them
but starvation in the streets^ or starvation and
cruelty in prison ! "

I have often wondered why he never did cry
out, why he was able to continue, day after day,
the dull, slow round of a wearisome existence —
an existence of sorrow : sorf ow benumbed by its
awful monotony ; an existence of pain, an exist-
ence of death.

But he faithfully obeyed the laws, and con-
scientiously observed the rules, prescribed by
Society for those whom it consigns to the abodes
of sorrow. I understand he was punished once
for talking. I have no personal knowledge
of the circumstance, but I know that it would
be almost a miracle for one to serve two years'
imprisonment without once being reported.
Some of the rules are made with no other object
than to be broken, so that an excuse may be
found for inflicting additional punishment.^
However, he could not have been punished by
soUtary confinement for fifteen days, as has
been stated. A governor is not empowered to
give more than three days. But twenty-four
hours' bread and water is the usual punishment
for talking, and, if it be the first offence^ the de-
linquent is generally let off with a caution.

^ The writer, it ahonkl be remembered, is a priaoa waider

39«

The Life of Oscar WHde

During the period of his incarceration the
Poet suffered in healthy but he seldom com-
plained to the doctor. He was afraid of doing
so lest he should be sent to the sick-ward. He
preferred the seclusion of his cell. There he
could think aloud without attracting the glances
or the undertone comments of the less mobile-
minded. There he could be alone — ^alone with
the spectre of his past^ alone with his books,
alone with his God !

When I entered his cell on a certain bleak,
raw morning in early March I found him still
in bed. This was unusual, and so I expressed
surprise. ''I have had a bad night/' he. ex-
plained. " Pains in my inside, which I think
must be cramp, and my head seems spUtting."
I asked whether he had better not report
sick. "No," he said; "not for anything; I
shall be better, perhaps, as the day advances.
Come back in a few minutes, when I will be up."

I returned to his cell a few minutes afterwards,
and found he was up, but looking so dreadfully
ill that I again advised him to see the doctor.
He declined, however, saying he would be all
right when he had had something warm to
drink.

I knew that in the ordinary course of events
he would have nothing for at least another hour,

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

SO I resolved to find something to give him in the
meanwhile myself. I hastened off, and warmed
up some beef-tea, poured it into a bottle, placed
the bottle inside my jacket, and returned to-
wards his cell. While ascending the staircase
the bottle sUpped between my shirt and skin.
It was very hot. I knew that there was an
unoccupied cell on the next landing, and I
determined to go there and withdraw the bottle
from its painful position. But at that moment
a voice called me from the central hall below.
I looked down, and saw the Chief Warder. He
beckoned me towards him. I went back. He
wished to speak concerning a discrepancy in the
previous night's muster report. I attempted to
elucidate the mystery of two prisoners being
in the prison who had no daim on its hospi-
tality. I am afraid I threw but little light on the
mystery. I was in frightful agony. The hot
bottle burned against my breast like molten lead.
I have said '' there are supreme moments in the
lives of men.*' Those were supreme moments
to me. I could have cried out in my agony,
but dared not. The cold, damp beads of per-
spiration gathered on my brow ; I writhed and
twisted in all manners of ways to ease myself
of the dreadful thing, but in vain. I could
not shift that infernal bottle — ^try as I might.

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

It lay there against my breast like a hot poultice,
but hotter than any poultice that was ever made
by a cantankerous mother or by a cantankerous
nurse. And the strange thing about it was that
the longer it lay the hotter it became. The
Chief eyed me curiously. I believe he thought
I had been drinking. I know I was incoherent
enough for anything. At last he walked off, and
left me, for which I felt truly thankful. I
bounded up the iron stairs, and entered the
Poet's cell, and, pulling out the burning bottle, I
related, amid gasps and imprecations, my awful
experience. The Poet smiled while the tale was
being told, then laughed — actully laughed. I
had never seen him laugh naturally before, and,
with the same qualification, I may add that I
never saw him laugh again.

I felt angry because he laughed. I told him
so. I said it was poor reward for all I had
undergone to be laughed at, and, so saying, I
came out, and closed the door — I closed it with
a bang.

When I took him nis breakfast he looked the
picture of contrition. He said he wouldn't
touch it imless I promised to forgive him.

*' Not even the cocoa ? " I asked.

*'Not even the cocoa," he replied; and he
looked at it longingly.

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

"Well, rather than starve you, FU forgive
you."

'^ And supposing I laugh again ? ** said he,
with a smile.

" I sha'n't forgive you again," I said.

The following morning he handed me a sheet
of foolscap blue official paper. '' Here is some-
thing," said he, ''which is not of much value
now, but probably may be if you keep it long
enough."

I had no opportunity of reading then, but when
I had read it I was struck by the power and
beauty of its expresssion. It was headed : '' An
Apology," and written in his old, original, and
racy style. The flow of subtle humour, the wit
and charm of the many epigrams, the naivete
contained in some of the personal allusions, ware
captivating. As a lover of style, I was capti*
vated, and told him so.

" Ah ! " said he, " I never thought to resume
that style again. I had left it behind me as a
thing of the past, but yesterday morning I
laughed, which showed i^ perversity, for I
really felt sorry for you. I did not mean to
laugh: I had vowed never to laugh again.
Then I thought it fitting when I had broken one
vow to break the other also. I had made two,
and I broke both, but now I have made them

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

again. I never intend to laugh, nor do I in*
tend ever again to write anything calculated
to produce laughter in others. I am no longer
the Sirius of Comedy. I have sworn solenmly
to dedicate my life to Tragedy- If I write any
more books, it wiU be to form a library of
lamentations. They will be written in a style
begotten of sorrow, and in sentences composed in
solitude, and pimctuated by tears. They will
be written exclusively for those who have
suffered or are suffering. I understand them,
and they will imderstand me. I shall be an
enigma to the world of Pleasure, but a mouth-
piece for the world of Pain."

In conversation the Poet was always perfectly
rational. His every action during the day was
rational, but, when left to himself in the evening,
he underwent a transformation, or, it might be
more appropriate to term it, a transfiguration.
It was when he was alone in his cell, when the
doors were double-locked, when the gas was
flickering, when the shadows of night were fall-
ing, when all was qAet, when all was dead. The
grim and watchful warder moves around with
velvety tread. There is a still and awful silence —
a silence in the warder's sUppers, a silence in the
cells, a silence in the air. The dark, sombre
shadow stops at the door of each living sepulchre,

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

and gazes in ; he peers through the aperture of
glass, to satisfy himself that the tomb has not
become too realistic, that it still omtains the
living, that none have dared to cheat the law
— ^have dared to baffle Justice.

The view is nearly the same in each : a drab
and ghostly figure seated on a stool, finishing
the day's task, which will be collected at the
hour of eight, or, if he has already finished his
work, he sits staring with vacant eyes into
vacancy, or looks for consolation in the Book
of Common Prayer,

The watching figure gUdes on, now stops,
peers into another cell near the end of the
corridor. The cell is marked C.3.3. — ^it is the
cell of the Poet ! Around the whole circle of
living sepulchres no sight Uke this ! No sight
more poignant ! No sight more awe-inspiring I
No sight more terrible. The Poet is now
alone ! Alone with the Gods ! Alone with the
Muse t

He is pacing his cell — one, two, three.
Three steps when he has to turn. Three steps
and turn again. His hands behind his back, a
wrist encircled by a hand, and thus backwards
and forwards, to and fro, he goes, his head
thrown back, smiling — ^but. Heavens, what a
smile 1

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

His eyes — ^those wonderful eyes ! — are fairly
dancing. Now they are looking towards the
ceiling — but far beyond the ceiling, looking even
beyond the depths of airy space, looking into the
infinite. Now he laughs ! What a laugh 1
Piercing, poignant, bitter — all and more are
condensed in that awful laugh. His powerful
imagination is at work. Though his body is
in fetters his soul is free — ^for who can chain
the soul of a poet ? It roams on high and
mighty altitudes — ^high above the haunts of men.
Then higher yet, above the silvery clouds, it
soars, and finds a resting-place among the pale
shadows of the moon.

Then back to earth it comes with one fell
stroke, as lightning flashed from heaven — ^back
through the iron window, back to the prison cell.
Hushl ... He speaks! ... He breathes the
sacred name of Mother, and calls his wife
by name I He sheds a tear, it gUstens on his
cheek, when, lo! an angel comes and the tear
evaporates. And thus his Ufe, whatever he may
have done, was purged from his account by one
hot tear that trickled from a heart redeemed
and purified by suffering. But hark! He
speaks again. He addresses an imaginary vis-
itor, with hands outstretched towards his Uttle
stool :

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The Life of Oscar WUde

" Long, long ago, in boyhood's days, I had a fond ambition :
I intended to reform the world, and alter its condition.
I raised myself — ^through Art alone — to a very high position.
And now, my friend, you see me, a poor victim of attrition/'

He laughs again^ and repeats the last few
words : " A victim of attrition. Rti-less attri-
tion.'' He turns away, and resumes his melan-
choly walk ; then stops once more before his
visionary visitor, and raises his finger. "The
world," he says, with a tinge of egotism, "is
not so solid after all. I can shake it with an
epigram and convulse it with a song."

He laughs once more, then sinks upon the
prison stool, and bows his head. And here we
leave him to think his thoughts alone — ^Alone !

Let no one mock those nightly scenes, and say
the Poet was not sincere. In prison he was the
very soul of sincerity — ^and remember, no mancan
wear a mask in prison. You may deceive the
governor, you may deceive the chaplain, you
may deceive the doctor, but you cannot deceive
the warder. His eye is upon you when no
other eye sees you, during your hours of sleep
as well as during your hours of wakefulness.

What the Poet was before he went to prison
I care not. What he may have been after he
left prison I know not. One thing I know,
however, that while in prison he lived the life

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The Life of Oscar Wilde

of a saint^ or as near that holy state as poor
mortal can ever hope to attain.

His gentle smile of sweet serenity was some-
thing to remember. It must have been a smile
like this that Bunyan wore as he lay in Bedford
Gaol dreaming his wonderful dreams. It must
have been a similar smile that illumined the
noble face of St Francis of Assisi when he spoke
of "his brother the wind and his sister the
rain."

Had Hugo been an artist with the brush as
he was artist with the pen he would have de-
picted such a smile as shimmering over the
features of the good bishop when he told his
great white lie to save poor Jean Valjean. And,
who can say that the Prince of Peace Himself
would have considered such a smile unworthy
of His countenance as He uttered the sweet
words of invitation to the little children whom
the disciples wished to keep away ? One can
remember such a smile although one's pen fails
to describe its sweetness, as it fails to describe
the sweet perfume of the rose. It was a smile
of resignation, a smile of benevolence, a smile
of iimocence, a smile of love.

Farewell, brave heart I May your sleep be
as peaceful as your smile. May the angels hover
around your tomb in death as they hovered

2C 401

The Life of Oscar Wilde

around your tomb in life. And, had you been
destitute of every other attribute that goes to
make the perfect man, that smile alone would
have served you as yom: passport through the
gates of Paradise and onwards to the Great
White Throne I

Farewell ! I have kept my promise. I have
remembered you during all the years that have
intervened since that memorable day we shook
hands and parted in your cold and cheerless cell.
You asked me to think of you sometimes. I
have thought of you always; scarcely one
single day has passed since then that I have not
thought of you — ^you who were at once my
prisoner and my friend.

409

PAUL ADAM, ONE Ol" THE MO5T DISTINGUISHED NOVELISTS AND WRITERS
IN FRANCE. PUBLISHED A bYMPATHETlC ARTICLE ABOUT WILDE AT THE
TIME OF HIS DOWNFALL, AND HAD PERSISTENTLY PROCLAIMED HIS
ADMIRATION FOR WII.DE's GENIUS AND HIS CONDEMNATION OF THE
WAY IN WHICH HE WAS TREATED. MONSIEUR ADAM ENJOYS THE
FULLEST CONFIDENCE OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.

c« pojg iixi.

CHAPTER XVIII

Oscar Wilde rdaased — Sebastian Melmoth — Beriieval — ^How
he appeared to his Friends — ^The Prison Taint — ^Degrada-
tion which had not degraded — ^Why he could not work —
" The Case of Warder Martin **—" Don't read this "—
" The Ballad of Reading Gaol " — He proceeds to Naples
— His Condition there — As to one of his Friends — He
returns to Paris — ^The Testimony of the Police — ^Monsieur
Dupoirier — His last Moments — Oscar Wilde is released —
His Burial and Grave — Post Funera — His Continental
Reputation — ^The Significance of this Spendthrift Loss.

After his release from Reading Gaol — having
refused the offer of certain American journalists
to pay him a large sum for an account of his
life in prison^ with the remark he could not
understand that such offers should be made to
a gentleman — ^he immediately crossed over to
France. His deference to English society was
such that he felt that^ having offended his cotm-
try^ he must consign himself to a perpetual exile
from England. For the rest, he had reason to
expect sympathy and welcome in France^ where
his case at the time of his downfall had been
widely discussed, with general commiseration.
It was held that the man had been very harshly
dealt with. Several prominent men had written
about him. Henri de R^gnier and Paul Adam,

403

The Life of Oscar WUde

who already at that time held high positions in
French literatnre^ in which to-day they rank as
masters^ had published articles describing his
great good qualities, and pa}dng respectful
homage to the convict in Wandsworth Gaol.
Henri Bauer, an influential critic, had published
an account of Wilde's condenmation and the
treatment that was being dealt out to him,
which thrilled civilised France with horror. A
house had been taken for him at a village called
Bemeval, on the sea-coast to the N.E. of Dieppe.
He had assumed the name of Sebastian Melmoth,
and his immediate purpose was to Uve here in
retirement, giving himself up to work. Those
amongst his friends who had means had sub-
scribed a smn which was handed to him on his
release, and there was also paid over to him the
balance of a gift of one thousand pounds which
had been applied to his purposes during his
confinement.

There is no worse school for husbandry than
a place where money has no use. The truth of
this is shown by the unvarjdng recklessness of
sailors. Prisoners display on their release an
extravagance as imprudent. The ship, as the
gaol, obUterates all notions of the value of
money. In Oscar Wilde's case contributory
causes were his native generosity and the new

404

The Life of Oscar Wilde

feeling of charity which filled his softened heart.
His resources melted away in his hands; he
sent presents of money to many of his late
fellow-prisoners; he entertained at Dieppe a
band of Montmartre poets, and at Bemeval, on
the occasion of the Queen's Jubilee, the whole
village school of children ; he rescued the poet
Ernest Dowson from a position of great em-
barrassment at the inn at Arques. He spent
money with the recklessness of sailors on shore
and prisoners free of gaol. No doubt it pleased
him — could not help but please him, having been
humiliated so long — to enjoy the power which
money gives in the spending of it. He was only
a man after all, with human weaknesses. That
he did feel the humiliation is shown in another
way. There are in existence some letters which
he wrote to the warder who had befriended him.
In one of these he indulges in the deUcious
pleasure of rebuking in his turn one of the class
under whose domination and rebuke he had
lived for so many months. The man had
written to him as " Oscar Wilde," " Care of
Sebastian Melmoth," and this is how Oscar
Wilde reproves him : " I must begin by scolding
you thoroughly for a piece of carelessness on
your part. I told you I had changed my name,
and wrote out most carefully for you my new

40s

The Life of Oscar Wilde

name and address — in spite of this you write to
me on the envelope as Oscar Wilde, Esqre., Care
of Sebastian Melmoth. Now, this was silly of
you. I changed my name so as not to be
bothered, and then you go and write to me as
Oscar WUde. You must be careful and thought-
ful about things. Just as much trouble is caused
by carelessness as by crime, my friend." Lower
down he tells the man — ^who was anxious to
leave the prison service, that hehas recommended
him for a post, and adds : '' I have spoken highly
of your character and intellect. Let me beg
of you to deserve all I have said of you. You
have, I think, a good chance of a good "pkace,
so you must be as sound and straightforward
and as good a fellow as possible."

He hankered after respectability. In inviting
Mends to visit him at Bemeval he used to ask
those who were married to bring their wives
with them, as though he felt that presence the
of ladies under his roof would vouch for its
respectability in his own eyes. He may have
fancied that prison had attainted him. It would
have been difficult for him to avoid such a
feeling. In his case there was not a single thing
he ever said, nor a single thing he ever did,
not a glance, not a flash of expression, not the
shadow of a thought, that could have betrayed

406

The Life of Oscar Wilde

to the keenest observer^ ignorant of the fact^
that this man had spent two years as a common
prisoner in a common gaol. Degradation had
failed to degrade him. His intimates noticed
only how vastly improved he was in physique^
in nerve and muscle, in energy and courage ;
how his whole being seemed rejuvenated, his
whole character sweetened. They attributed it
to the prison rSgime; for in those days they
did not know how, in the lonely meditation of
his cell, he had found the true secret of Ufe.
He showed himself to those who had the privilege
of seeing him during the weeks which he spent
in Bemeval a gentleman, a hero, and a Christian.
It is the privilege and the distinction of those
who take Christ as their model in Ufe, who
follow Him in humiUty, in resignation, and kind-
ness, to receive at the hands of men treatment
no other than that which was accorded to Him
also. One cannot doubt that a man so keen
of intelligence as Oscar Wilde well foresaw, when
he came to that determination which he so
eloquently sets forth in " De Profundis," what
the world would reserve for one who should
oppose to cruelty, mansuetude; to insult, for-
bearance ; to hatred, forgiveness ; and to con-
tempt, the sublime pity which charity inspires.
He was admirably instructed in the ways of

407

The Life of Oscar Wilde

society : he was essentially a man of the world.
He could give^ in the old days^ the most useful
advice on how best to act in the worldly sense.
A Mend recalls how he once said of suicide that
it was wrong, because it was the highest compU-
ment that an individual could pay to society.
Of course, he knew, when he left prison in the
state of mind into which he had schooled him-
self, exactly what he had to expect from the
world. He had accepted in advance all the
outrages that were to be heaped upon him;
deliberately he had entered upon a mart3;Tdom
for which the world was to refuse him any
crown. With his great powers and the renewed
vigour of his body he could have dominated the
world. To effect that, as we now see if we
direct our eyes towards Germany, he had but
to let himself Uve. But Christianity possessed
him ; he had laid aside all combativeness, and
he allowed himself to die.

His noble purpose he maintained during those
first months with a courage which surprised his
Mends. Only on very rare occasions did a
flash of regret for the things that he had lost
disclose some streak of Inttemess in his heart.
There were very rare moments when he spoke
with irritation, of which it was but too easy
for his Mends to trace the cause.

408

The Life of Oscar WUde

From the very first he had the great mortifica-
tion to find that, under the new circumstances of
his life, work would be difficult to him. That
is to say, he recognised from the first that, as he
could no longer write under his name, he would
be unable to produce an3^hing worthy of him-
self. He was one of those artists who write for
fame ; for whom the money consideration is
nothing. He could not constrain himself to
hack-work : anonjonity's black cloak enshrouded
his brain. He needed applause ; he thirsted
after personal triumph — ^those were essential
factors in his artistic temperament. So though
he never spoke more brilliantly than during the
last years of his Ufe, because there the reward
was inunediate in the applause of the marvelling
listeners, he wrote nothing, all stimulus being
lacking.

We have in a letter which he addressed to a
working man in Reading, after his letter, " The
Case of Warder Martin " had appeared in The
Daily Chronicle (28th May 1897), the pathetic
proof of this natural hunger for applause, which
gives to the great starvation of literary artists
its keenest pang.

" What does Reading say to it all ? " he asks.
" Have you seen any of the warders ? I sup-
pose not.*' Then he passes on to other things,

409

The Life of Oscar Wilde

but presently comes back to the subject of his
famishing curiosity. " Have you heard any-
thing said about me, with reference to my
letter ? An3^hing nice ? " In the many
pathetic letters from his pen which are in exist-
ence, one will search in vain for a passage more
pathetic than this. And we are to remember
that the man who was so anxious to hear that
people were talking about him as a literary
artist had only a few days previously refused
with indignation to lend himself to the wide
publicity offered by American correspondents.
It was not notoriety after which he hankered ;
it was recognition of his Uterary powers.

"The Case of Warder Martin/' which has
frequently been reprinted since his death, was
a plea for the better treatment of children in
prison in particular, and in general for the more
hmnane application of the right of punishment.
It is a noble plea, written in noble language, and
the best documentary evidence that the most
exacting can demand of the complete mental
recovery and wonderful psychological trans-
formation of its author. Let any man read
first " The Importance of being Earnest," which
was the last thing he wrote before going into
prison, and next this letter in the Chronicle,
and then say, if he dare, that Oscar Wilde's an-

410

The Life of Oscar Wilde
nouncement in '' De Profundis/' that meditation
had made a new and different man of him, was
lure and deception.

He returned to the subject of prison treatment
sn a letter entitled " Don't read this if you
want to be Happy to-day/' which appeared
in the Chronicle on 24th March 1898. These
two letters, and his " Ballad of Reading Gaol/'
of which the Utt-motiv is no different, are all
that he wrote after his release from prison. He
was keenly interested in this subject of prison
reform. Amongst the books which were found
in his room in the hotel where he died were
several in which this subject is treated. He had
John Howard's book on " Prisons/' and a number
of magazines containing articles on prison life.

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" has been
described by certain authorities as the finest
ballad in the English language. In July 1904
there appeared in The Nineteenth Century ^ in
an article by Lady Currie, entitled " Enfants
Trouvfe of Literature/' a critical notice of this
poem. The name of the review in which this
appeared is significant, when we remember what
Oscar Wilde had said, in one of his prison con-
versations, about the way in which his name
would be regarded in that quarter. Lady Currie
writes of the " terrible ' Ballad of Reading Gaol/

The Life of Oscar Wilde

with its splendours and inequalities^ its mixture
of poetic force^ crude realism^ and undeniable
pathos." The writer adds lower down : " All
is grim concentrated tragedy from cover to
cover. A friend of mine/' she continues^ " who
looked upon himself as a judge in such matters,
told me that he would have placed certain
passages in this poem, by reason of their terrible,
tragic intensity, upon a level with some of the
descriptions in Dante's ' Infemo,' were it not
that * The Ballad of Reading Gaol ' was so much
more infinitely human."

In the preface to the translation of Andr6
Gide's mischievous memoir of Oscar Wilde
is quoted the following extract from a review
in one of the leading London papers : —

" The whole is awful as the pages of Sophocles.
That he has rendered with his fine art so much
of the essence of his life and the life of others
in that inferno to the sensitive is a memorable
thing for the social scientist, but a much more
memorable thing for literature. This is a
simple, a poignant, a great ballad, one of the
greatest in the English language."

It is very certain that there is in poetic de-
scription nothing in the world's literature more
powerful, more overwhelming, than the account
Oscar Wilde gives of the sleepless night which

The Life of Oscar Wilde

he spent on the eve of the execution, those verses
ending with the lines :

" At last I saw the shadowed bars,

Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall

That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world

God's awful dawn was red."

The very nature of a ballad demands a certain
naivete of expression, a certain laxity in the
rhymes. It is, however, a curious thing that it
is a makeshift rhyme which is used in the one
verse that, while it appeals most strongly to
those who are morbid-minded, inspires some of
the poet's friends with the feeUng that it shows
that, in spite of his splendid renovation, the
obUquity of vision which was ever one of his
great defects had not altogether been overcome.

These are the Unes referred to :

" Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss.

The brave man with a sword ! '*

The thing is not true ; if it were true it is
badly expressed, and what is intended for an-
tithesis degenerates on examination into anti-
climax. Yet many find these Unes the finest

4'3

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in a ballad which is filled with beauties. Was
this the poor man's final indulgence in his dfin
joy in " astounding fools," or was he in earnest ?

The Ballad was published early in 1898.
Oscar Wilde had expended over it an immense
amount of labour. It had been revised and
corrected with a precise regard of even the
slightest detail, of which we get some conception
from the many letters which he wrote to his
publisher, Mr Leonard Smithers, while the book
was passing through the press. Almost each
word in the poem was made the subject of long
consideration, of discussion. He advises on
changes in the punctuation. The rudiments had
caught him up at last.

These same letters give evidence of the very
mournful condition to which he had at last
come. They are full, on the one hand, of de-
scriptions of his poverty and needs; on the
other of recriminations against his friends. In
one letter we read : " My present position is so
awful that I began to-day a modem social
comedy — ^and would in consequence have had
an excellent appetite for dinner had there been
any dinner."

Elsewhere he threatens suicide. "' I shall take
steps," he says.

He was then living in Naples. The circum-

414

The Life of Oscar Wilde

stance under which he had been obliged to
leave Bemeval, and to return to the least desir-
able companionship that the world of men
offered to his choice^ are summed up in the
following sentence by the author of "Twenty
Years in Paris " : —

" The time came^ however, when, being
without money, repulsed, abandoned, desolate,
he could no longer resist entreaties which offered
to him companionship in the place of utter
loneliness, friendship in the place of hostility,
homage in the place of insult, and in the place
of impending destitution a luxurious and elegant
hospitality/'

Measures were, however, taken at once by
third parties to break up this association, and,
all supplies being refused, Oscar Wilde's con-
dition in Naples became the hazardous existence
which he describes in his letters to Smithers.
His irritation at the collapse of his resolutions,
at their overthrow by the very force of things,
was so great that he turned upon all men. He
wrote abusive letters to his friends, not even
sparing the noblest of them, Robert Ross, the
subject of the glowing eulogy which one finds
in "De Profundis." Those words are letters
patent of immortality; but simple justice, not
IcMfdly generosity, directed that splendid tribute.

41s

The Life of Oscar Wilde

This Robart Ross's conduct towards Oscar
Wilde was and is the most beautiful thing that
the history of noble friendships records. That
he gave him everything that he had may be
nothing ; it may be nothing that he bore obloquy
and endured suffering for his sake ; that he
visited him constantly in prison ; that he fought
and worked unceasingly to safeguard his friend's
interests^ keeping a level and commercial head
in the midst of the unceasing onslaughts of the
harpies who kept swooping down upon Oscar
Wilde's prostrate body; that he watched over
him like a tender brother during those awful
months in Paris ; that he was with him in his
last illness, tending him with the gentleness of
a sister of charity ; that it was he who brought
God at last into the gloomy room in the Hotel
d' Alsace, and so obtained that the man who was
accursed of men went out of this world with the
kiss of pardon on his forehead, with body sancti-
fied and anointed, under the shadow of the
cross; that he ordained his honourable obse-
quies, and was one of the very rare mourners
who followed him to the grave. All these
things, from the nature of the man, may be
nothing; but what is unusual and splendid, a
disillusion to the pessimists, a delight to those
who, quand tnhne, would think well of humanity,

416

MON.sIKlK DITOIKIKR, LANDl.ORD OF THE HOTKI. 1>AI.SA(K. OMAR
WII.DE DIED IN HIS ARMS.

To Uicf jKii/*' 417.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

is that^ though five years have now passed since
Oscar Wilde died, he pursues quietly the level
way of his noble friendship. He is one of the
very rare people with whom the dead do not die
quick. He goes on being good to Oscar Wilde.
He devotes his means to the payment of his
friend's creditors. He jealously fosters his
friend's Uterary reputation. He watches over
his grave at Bagneux, looking forward to the
day when he shall be able, of his own means, to
secure a permanent and worthier resting-place
■ for his ashes. Such constancy after death is not
^ a virtue of which humanity has warranted the
expectation. Devotion dies by slow degrees
when the loved one is no longer anything but a
memory, a name. Evil breeds evil; but here
also good was bred, and in this mournful his-
tory this friendship is a beautiful and pleasant
thing.

Oscar Wilde Uved for three and a half years
after his release from prison. After he had left
Italy he returned to Paris. Here for some time
he resided in a hotel in the Rue MarsoUier. He
was forced to leave this house because he could
not pay his bill. He was Uterally turned out
into the streets. From this position he was
rescued by the landlord of a small hotel in the
Rue des Beaux-Arts, Monsieur Dupoirier, who
3D 417

The Life of Oscar Wil

had known him in his prosperous days. Du*
poirier offered him rooms in his house, and went
to the hotel in the Rue MarsoUier, and dis-
charged the bill, recovering Wilde's property.
From that time on Wilde resided at Number 13
Rue des Beaux-Arts, which is within five minutes'
walk of the Hotel Voltaire of his imperial da3rs.
He had no superstitious dread of the number of
the house, which was to be his final dwelling-
place, though, like all great minds, he enter-
tained many other superstitions. One can
understand this. The great mind recognises,/ ^1^
what the fool does not, that there are powers in \f^
the universe of which he has no comprehension j
although he discerns their manifestations. Oscai-
Wilde was superstitious. For instance, he con-
sidered it very unlucky to drive in a carriage
which was drawn by a white horse.

Of the Hotel d* Alsace it would not be fair to
say that it was squalid. It is related that Mon-
sieur Dupoirier remarked, after Wilde's death,
that it was very unfair for the newspaper writers
to speak of his house as a hotel of the tenth
order, when the fact was that it was une maisan
de dnquihne caiegorie. It was the kind of house
where regular lodgers are few, and where the
profits of the undertaking are derived mainly
from stray visitors. At the back of the house

4i«

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was a small yard or garden, where Oscar often
used to sit of afternoons, reading books and
sipping absinthe.

It has been stated that his life in Paris during
this period was one of shameful relapse. Calumny
is still at work with his memory. The fact
should be put on record that he was at all times
under the close supervision of the pohce. An
influential friend of his once asked Henri Bauer
to use his interest with the Minister of Fine Arts
on Oscar Wilde's behalf. Henri Bauer after-
wards reported that the Minister had said that
he would do nothing for a man who frequented
such company as Oscar Wilde was in the habit
of frequenting, that the police were carefully
watching him, and that on the least provocation
he would be arrested. Now, as he was never
interfered with to the time of his death, it seems
very clear that he did nothing that warranted
such interference, and that caltunny has dis-
covered what the spies of the Rue de Jerusalem
failed to observe.

One wonders who the associates were to whom
the pohce had referred in their report to the
Minister. The people with whom he used to be
seen were reputable enough as the large tolerance
of Paris goes. The poor man could not choose
his associates, and as he loved to talk he

419

The Life of Oscar Wilde

was sometimes glad, in his loneliness, of any
audience.

He appears, at least during the last year of his
life, to have been provided with means. His
incurable generosity, no doubt, accounts for the
fact that, though his monthly bill at Dupoirier's
hotel was never a large one, he died owing the
friendly Uttle man close upon one hundred
pounds, and that there were many other debts
in Paris. Dupoirier's bill, and some of the other
accounts, have since been paid — ^we need not
ask by what devoted friend.

Of the awful tragedy of his last months
Ernest La Jeunesse gives a striking account in
his article in the Revue Blanche. Here is a short
passage describing his condition towards the
end:

" He has been into the country and to Italy,
he longs for Spain, he wishes to return to the
shores of the Mediterranean: all that he can
have is Paris, a Paris which shuts door after
door against him, a Paris which has no longer
more to offer him than holes into which he may
creep to drink, a Paris which is deaf, a famished,
spasmodic Paris, flushed here, there pale, a dty
without eternity and with no myth. Each day
brings sufferings with it for him, he has no
longer either a court or a true friend, he falls

420

4 ^|4.

c —

The Life of Oscar WUde

into the blackest neurasthenia. ... He is
haunted Mdth the foreboding of deaths which in
the end will kill him."

For months before he died he suffered from
pains in the head. At the same time he was
lashing his moribund energies by the use of
alcohol. Dupoirier relates that he used to write
all nighty keeping his strength alive with brandy.

In the end the pains grew so intolerable that
the doctors said that an operation would be
necessary. But the operation threatened to be
a very difficult one^ for it was impossible to
locate the exact spot where surgical treatment
would benefit the patient . Only one of the great
masters of surgery could be trusted, so the
physicians said, with such an operation. A
huge fee was mentioned as the amount that
would probably be demanded by such a master.
" Ah, well, then," said Oscar, " I suppose
that I shall have to die beyond my means."
"He must have suffered terribly," says Du-
poirier, " for he kept raising his hands to his
head to try and ease the torture. He cried out
again and again. We used to put ice on his head.
I was ever giving him injections of morphine."
Robert Ross was with him at the end. That he
brought a Roman Cathohc priest to the dying
man has already been recorded with a recog-

421

The Life of Oscar Wilde

nition of the kiiidness of the act. There was
another friend also m attendance. But fate
would have it that neither of the two were there
when Oscar Wilde breathed his last. This was
at two o'clock on the afternoon of 30th November
1900. Dupoirier was holding him in his arms
when he passed away.

He had foreseen that he woidd not live to see
the dawn of the new century. A journalist
has recorded a remark that Oscar Wilde made
in this connection.

*' The last time I saw him," he writes, " was
about three months before he died. I took
him to dinner at the Grand Caf^. He was then
perfectly well and in the highest spirits. All
through dinner he kept me delighted and
amused. Only afterwards, just before I left
him, he became rather depressed. He actually
told me that he didn't think he was going to
Uve long; he had a presentiment, he said. I
tried to turn it ofi into a joke, but he was quite
serious. ' Somehow,' he said, ' I don't think
I shall Uve to see the new century.' Then a long
pause. ' If another century began, and I was
still alive, it would really be more than the
English could stand.' '*

He was buried in Bagneux Cemetery on 3rd
December 1900, where he lies in the 17th Grave

422

The Life of Oscar Wilde

of the 8th Row of the 15th Division. The in-
scription on his tomb is as follows : —

OSCAR WILDE

Od. 16M., 1854 Nov. 30ih., 1900

Verbis meis addere nihil audebant et
super illos stillabat eloquium xneum.

Job xxix. 22.
R.IJ>.

The five years' lease of this grave was renewed
in 1905 by Robert Ross^ who hopes before that
period has elapsed to be able to remove the
ashes to a permanent resting-place in one of the
Parisian cemeteries, when the friends and ad-
mirers of the poet will be able, if they wish to
do so, to raise a monument over his grave.

" Deaths are apt to be tragic/' is the comment
which was made upon his passing by one who
described his last hours. His death, coming when
it did, avoidable as it was, wasteful as it was,
was more cruel and more tragic than any passing
of which Uterary history has record. If he had
only taken care of himself ; if someone had been
by him to take care of him ! Time was preparing
for him a splendid triimtiph. The harvest was
near to the ripening. England had rejected him,
sacrificing the artist to the mental patient, but
other countries, indifferent to ever3rthing but the

4^3

The Life of Oscar Wilde

artist's work, were just about to open their arms.
If he could have Uved only three or four short
years longer he would have found in the plaudits
of the whole Continent some solace for all his
terrible sufferings. In Germany he is to-day
a "World's Poet," and ''Salom6" is a
" World's Play." And we are not to dispute
the Uterary taste of Germany. Oscar Wilde
has been placed high in Germany's Walhalla.
In Italy his success is no less startling. The
ItaUans do not resent the comparison of him
to the divine Alighieri. It may be very
foolish, very wrong, but it simply is so. Nor
have his sufferings, the miserable story of his life,
created interest through pity, and set afoot a
passing mode. A large number of Germans
know nothing about the man Oscar Wilde, barely
know his name, and yet are enthusiasts about
his work. A friend of his, travelling to Russia
at the beginning of last year, fell into conversa-
tion in the train with a banker who was re-
turning to Bromberg from an audience with the
Emperor. This gentleman told him that he had
spent one evening at the theatre, where he had
seen Oscar Wilde's " Salom6," and he described
the extraordinary impression it had produced
on the audience. This seems to have been as
great as that which was produced in the Paris

424

MADAME DirOIRlER OF THE HOTEL D'aUSACE, WHO WAS
KIM) TO OSCAR WIIPE DURING HIS LAST DAYS.

To face yagc 425.

The Life of Oscar Wilde

Salon by the exhibition of the pictures forming
Tissot's iUustration of the Life of Christ. " I
too/' said the banker, '* though I am a hard-
headed man of business, I felt like doing extra-
ordinary things. I felt Uke springing up in my
seat, and shouting out, and waving my arms.
Such a mental convulsion I never felt within my-
self, never thought I could feel in myself." The
friend then began to refer to Wilde's history,
and discovered that the banker did not even
know the name of the author of " Salom6," and
had never heard a single word about his life I

Amongst literary Germans this ignorance does
not, of course, prevail. There, thanks to the
activity of the devoted Doctor Meyerfeld of
Berlin, one of the foremost of German critics,
Wilde's reputation is founded on a soUd ex-
position of his literary achievements. Meyerfeld
has rendered great services to his memory, not
only by writing about the man and the artist,
but by defending his memory against the
literary harpies of his country who have sought
to snatch profit from the pubUc interest. Every
German scribbler has his contribution on Wilde
to the periodicals, but Meyerfeld is there to
bludgeon the traffickers back into their dens.

Yes ; the death, occurring when it did, was in-
deed tragic. There are those who hold it as sad

4^5

The Life of Oscar Wilde

in reality as the realistic parable in which Zola
describes^ by means of the death of Gervaise^
the certain destruction of those in whom the
power of resistance has been destroyed by unjust
circumstances. One might change one word in
Zola's tragic page^ and write :

''Mais la verity 6tait qu'il s'en aUait de
misere^ des ordures et des fatigues de sa vie
gAt6e."

" Sa vie g&tde " : that was it.

These circumstances may afford satisfaction
to the moraUsts and the unscientific : to those
who have the cult of Uterature^ and that patriot-
ism which desires to see England take a fore-
most place also in the intellect of the world, they
can bring nothing but poignant regret. These
cannot but deplore a loss, an unnecessary^
spendthrift, wasteful loss, which deprives Eng-
land of a genius who, as what we observe to-day
on the Continent incontestably estabUshes, could
have restored — ^having found himself — our litera-
ture and our stage to the rank of supremacy from
which for centuries past they have been
degraded.

42b

f»->« \k \\iii»i.\ «;k\\i. m r.\..\i.r\.

To face i'*i-j^ 42»k

APPENDIX

OSCAR WILDE AT CHICKERING HALL

Mr Oscar Wilde delivered on Monday, at Chickeiing
Hall, a lecture on ''The English Renaissance," which
might fairly be called a success. In the present da3rs
of easily manufactured notoriety a young man who has
managed to establish a doubt in the minds of the public
as to whether he is a profound thinker or an utter fool
may be said to be on the high road to a very substitute
for fame, and this is what Mr Wilde had previous to
his lecture succeeded in doing. The difficulty with his
future career is likely to be that his lecture solves the
doubt, and that he will be unable to keep alive any
curiosity on the subject. When we say that he solves
the doubt we mean, of course, that he is a profound
thinker — ^not by any means, to parody a phrase of his
own, a thinker of unthought thoughts, but of thoughts
thought and expressed too, for that matter, a great
number of times before, though not thought nor ex-
pressed so profoundly as by Mr Wilde, nor in his own
manner. To say that the ssthete is a disciple of
Ruskin gives a meagre idea of the chameleon-Uke
power of imitative reproduction which he displays.
His hospitable mind has opened its doors to Rusldn,
Millais, Holman Hunt, Dante Rossetti, Swinburne,
Baudelaire, Gautier, William Morris, Bume- Jones,
Keats, Wordsworth, SheUey, Walt Whitman, Goethe,
and Gilbert and Sullivan. It may seem at first that it

427

Appendix

would be difficult for even a deep young man to find
a common basis for an aesthetic movement in all these ;
but Mr Wilde is not only deep enough for this, but
far too deep to explain what the common basis is or
what he has to do with it himself. Under these cir-
cumstances, and at the risk of violating Mr Wilde's
fundamental maxim of critidsm — that the function
qf the critic is to hold his peace at all times and in all
places — ^we will venture to offer a suggestion or two
in explanation of the somewhat mysterious phenomenon
presented by Mr Wilde's lecture tour.

When Mr Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites set about
reforming public taste in England they were forced
to enter upon something very like a crusade. Almost
every canon of art criticism that existed had to be de-
molished, and its opposite established in its place.
Springing up in a conununity strongly impr^nated
with moral and religious ideas, it is no wonder that the
teachings of the school should have taken a religious
tone. Appeals to the love of beauty alone would
hardly have aroused the dull British Philistine from
his contented, vulgar lethargy. To touch him at all
it was necessary to stir his conscience ; and the fore-
runners of the aesthetic movement — ^who, by the way,
were all sincere men, and loved art themselves with a
semi-rdigious fervour — became the founders of a pro-
selytising church, a sort of artistic Rock of Ages in the
weltering and waste of the British Philistinism. They
brought the pure milk of the Word to the heathen,
showed him his errors, touched his soul, awoke him to
the new life, lifted him out of the mire of sin in which
he lay wallowing, and showed him the true path. The
unconverted heathen mocked and raged, as the heathen
always do, and set up mere false gods in the shape of
bad pictures, and ridiculed the true faith in the columns

428

Appendix

of their heathen organ, Punch, They could not
butcher the apostles, or give them to wild beasts to
devour, but they inlBicted upon them all the social
persecution that the mild manners of modem times
permit, by making them have a thoroughly ""bad
time/* The persecution had its natural effect in
strongly stimulating the devotion and seal of the sect,
and no one who has given any attention to its vrritings
or teachings can have failed to notice the sacerdotal
tone assumed by it — ^a tone of which there is a faint
echo in Mr Wilde^s platitudes and paradoxes, and even
in his dimly religious voice.

Everybody knows now how the Church spread ; how
little by little the old Philistines were converted and
new-bom Philistines were baptised into the new faith.
The rage of the heathen disappeared, and on every side
the galleries of the old religion were cleared of their
Philistine rubbish, and swept and garnished to make
room for what was purely trae and precious in art.

The success of any church in converting the heathen,
of course, puts it in a different attitude towards society
from that which it occupies in the days of adversity.
The Philistine, who, though a man of sin, has a good
deal of sense, always keeps his eyes on the children of
Ught, and is always willing to take his cue from them
when he finds it necessary to do so, and when he does
do this he does it handsomely. The Philistine is after
all the same flesh and blood as the rest of us, though
so hopelessly sunk in the mire. After a time he too
joined the Church, and, so far as fashionable society in
England is concerned, it may be said to have been con-
verted for ten years. The connection between the
decorative or aesthetic movement, which Mr Wilde,
with delightful impudence, is undertaking to further
in this cotmtry, and the old Pre-Raphaelite crusade is

439

Appendix

easy enough to trace. It too has been completdy
successful, and is in full possessicm of the waUs, floors,
ceilings, and furniture of the ^^ best society " in England,
and to a great and increasing extent of the United
States. Mr Wilde, therefore, instead of being, as he
represents himself, a missionary preaching art to the
heathen in the wilderness at the sacrifice of fortune,
fame, and everything that the Philistine holds most
dear, stands to art more in the relation of the fashion-
aUe preacher of the " swell " congregation to religion.
To compare profane things to sacred, Mr Wilde is the
Charles Honeyman of the religion of which Ruskin was
the St Paul. When Ruskin preached society was
Philistine, but it now forms the congregation. We all
know the spirit in which we listen to the fashionable
preacher — how we like to hear him denounce sin, and
expose the vanity and frivolity of worldly pursuits,
the money-loving and commercial spirit of the age,
and how true we feel it to be that collections ought
to be taken up for the conversion of others. There is
the same vagueness too about the articles of Mr Wilde^s
faith that there is about those of the Reverend Charles.
The aesthetic principles which he aimounced on Monday
at Chickering Hall were in a strange jumble, the chief
merit of which lay in the serene superiority of the
lecturer to the confusion which he produced in the
mind of his audience, and which we notice has led one
reporter of it to imagine that he said that Knglish
aestheticism sprang froin the union of Hellenism with
the romantic spirit, '"as from the marriage of Faust
and Helen of Troy sprang the beautiful Lady
Euphemia."

Mr Wilde, again, represented himself as being de-
termined to carry on the warfare of art against Philis-
tinism to the bitter end, but really he brings peace

430

Appendix

rather than a sword. Art, when first introduced among
the Philistines, did lead to an internecine struggle.
It introduced discord into every family — set father
against son, and mother against daughter. It inspired
passions in the simple-minded, barbarous Anglo-Saxon
which nothing else but religion and the study of
language had ever produced. But it is easy to see from
the reception we have given to Mr Wilde that he is
not an iconoclast, or in any danger of suffering the
fate of a martyr. He is, as we have said, spreading
the true faith in Art, much as a fashionable preacher
spreads the true faith in the Gospel. He and his con-
gr^;ation are really all of one mind, but he has the gift
of expression, the sweet eloquence which the successful
preacher must always have, and he thoroughly appre-
ciates the value of extravagance in attracting attention.
He is glad to have even his congregation laugh at him,
if they will only join in his prayer to the Steel of Toledo
and the Silk of Genoa, or acknowledge the supreme
importance of the *' gaudy leonine beauty " of the sun-
flower and the '' precious loveliness " of the lily.

It makes little difference whether Maudle is the
caricature of Mr Wilde or Mr Wilde a realisation of
Maudle. It is the doubt which gives reality to both.
There is nothing that shows Mr Wilde in his true light
so completely as his great appreciation of Bunthorne,
Bunthome is an impostor, an " aesthetic sham," and
his existence every night tends to make the whole
lesthetic movement ridiculous. Now, it is very true
that all new moments in art or poetry have had their
parodists and their satirists. But it never occurred to
any reformer before Mr Wilde that it would be a good
thing to encourage parody and satire as a means of
keeping the ball going. The same manager '* runs '*
the lecture tour of the aesthete and the operatic com-

4Jl

Appendix

pany which heaps ridicule upon him. You hear the
true Gospel at Chickering Hall, and join the mocking
laughter of the heathen at the absurdity of it at the
Standard Theatre. We must say that, to our mind,
Mr Gilbert has the best of the joke. Real reformers
have usually hated, as only just men can hate, those
who sneer at reform. It was left to Mr Wilde to dis-
cover the commercial value of ridicule in the good
cause. Mr Wilde is a poet, a preacher, and a man of
the world. As a man of the world, he knows that
the true way to attract attention is to shock people's
sense of decency, and the true way for a preacher to
become fashionable is to make the Word pleassint and
soothing to fashionable people, and that a very good
substitute for fame is the notoriety attracted by silliness.
Mr Wilde is an essentially foreign product, and can
hardly succeed in this country. What he has to say
is not new, and his extravagance is not extravagant
enough to amuse the average American audience. His
knee-breeches and long hair are good as far as they go ;
but Bunthome has really spoiled the public for Wilde.

I2th January 1882. The Naiioni

OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE IN ENGLISH PRO-
VINCES ON THE " HOUSE BEAUTIFUL "

He used to commence his lecture on the "House
Beautiful " by saying that he would refrain from
'"giving a definition of the abstract principle of beauty*' ;
that metaph3rsicians, rhetoricians, and poets had all
tried to do so in vain.

" There was a time,*' he continued, " when every
house was beautiful. There was once a spirit which

432

Appendix

touched everything into loveliness." The right basis
of every artistic movement was to '^ value and honom-
handicraft." Delicacy of hand, refinement of imagina-
tion, the eye to see beauty, and the power to transmit
that beauty to others — ^imless all this were honoured
" art might become the luxury of a few people, or it
might be the fashion of a few seasons," but it would
be nothing more. He referred to what he had seen
in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco, where all the
Uttle vessels and cups of the Chinese were articles of the
greatest taste, while he in his hotel had his tea given
him in a '* ddf cup of the size of half a brick." All
rules for decoration must be general. £stheticism is not
a style, but a principle. All rules applicable to decora-
tion must be '* broad, workaday, and not abstruse."
Mr William Morris's first rule was : *' Not to have any-
thing in the house but what one knows to be useful
and what one thinks to be beautiful." ''What strange
ornaments," said Oscar Wilde, " are to be seen in the
houses of very charming people. Wax flowers " (here
people used to laugh)^'' horrible things perpetrated in
Berlin wool" {Laughier) — ''and the endless array of anti-
macassars, which seems to reduce Uf e to ' the level of an
eternal washing-day.' " (This was always applauded,
and became a household phrase.) The lecturer then
quoted Mr Morris's second principle : " Not to have
anything but what is felt to have been a joy to some-
one to make it, and a joy to others to use it." " This
taUe-doth," said Oscar Wilde, pointing to the one on
the table in front of him — ^which was usually a showy
one of indescribable pattern — " must have been made
by someone who worked under permanent depression
of spirits." {Laughter.) The third principle was : " Not
to have in one house any imitation of one texture in
another." Wood painted like stone, paper appearing

«K 433

Appendix

like marble, and other things which Ruskin condemned
so forcibly. For a man, said Ruskin, to have on the
walls of his hall a marble paper was extremely im-
moral. He (Oscar Wilde) woidd leave out of his
dictionary all fine ethical words about art. To him
the " morality of art was its beauty, the immorality
its ugliness,*' and that could be said without going into
graver moral questions. We ought not, then, to think,
but to be absolutely certain that there is nothing in
our house which is not useful and that is not beautiful.
He ¥ras often asked: '* What is the true artistic colour?'*
He was unable to reply. All colours were artistic. He
smiled when he read in the newspapers that such and
such a colour would be a fashionable one for the season.
As in music, so in colour: one note was not more
beautiful than another. The combination of notes was
music, the combination of colours was beauty. How
we should smile if it were to be announced that B Flat
would for some months be the fashionable note — vrbat
a dreary lookout it would be ! But quite as depressing
was it to be told that one particular colour would be
fashionable for the season. It was essential to true
decoration that there should be a knowledge of back-
ground, of neutrals, and of tertiary colours, so as to
produce the impression without glare. Gold vras a
neutral, its object to give tone, but it had been made
into a primary colour. It was always safe to treat
walls as background and keep bright colours for detail.
Porcelain, silk, and such-like textures were best for
bright colours. Colour not merely makes things
beautiful, but is often the substitute for architectural
features, which in themselves are not possible to us.
"The fault of most rooms," Mr Wilde said, "was in
their being too high.** He then had a good-humoured
tilt at the scientific doctors who advocate high rooms.

434

Appendix

Ventilation was what was wanted. Yon need not light
3raur rooms with five glaring lights of a chandelier
hanging from a "plaster vegetable " in the centre of
the ceiling. There was no reason why rooms should
not be lighted with candles or oil-lamps. The lecturer
then went on to describe how a room too high or too
low should be treated in its decoration. The sten-
cillings of Japan, designed by the first Japanese artists,
were then described. Large windows and windows
coming too low were condemned. Plate-glass gives
S^are, but not light. Glare is to light what noise is to
music. When ugly windows are obtained, then the
upholsterer is sent for to see what he can do. The up-
holsterer has no scruples. He brings a pole as heavy
as a ship's mast, and massive rings thereon to support
a curtain — ^not to fall into folds and reach only to the
floor — ^but to trail and to be looped with woollen bands ;
and all other kinds of wickedness the upholsterer de-
signs. {Laughter.) The beauty of small panes and
coloured glass was then pointed out. Coloured glass
made " light beautiful.'* Dreary, white, shining marble
chimney-pieces were next satirised, and were described
as things which it would be wicked to sell and still
more wicked to give away. The problem was : What
to do with them ? Mirrors came in for unqualified
condemnation. A room was supposed to have four
walls. All sorts of fantastic shapes were given by a
mirror reaching from the chimney-piece to the ceiling,
and every straight line was deflected. Ifirrors were
one of the unpunished crimes of the nineteenth century.
He did not want to say anything more severe than that.
When the present century came in there was a feeling
that all useful things should be made as ugly as possible.
Useful things ugly, and then the rooms filled with a
number of delicate little luxuries. The common things

435

Appendix

of life ought to be made so beautiful that nothing shall
hereafter be called common. The qualities of good
furniture were that it should be well made, be comfort-
able, and be made by people of refinement for people of
refinement. There ¥ras something in art be^des
honesty. Honesty was not a principle but a condition
of art. Furniture well made, and of good materials,
grew more beautiful the longer you had it. The most
comfortable chairs were not the softest. In conclusion,
the lecturer, in an eloquent peroration, showed how all
possibility of having in England beautiful things de-
pended upon the honour and dignity given to handi-
craft. It was here that the lecturer became most
effective and impressive, and most earnestly did he
plead that handicraft might have a place in the educa-
tion of every child. We in England have made a great
mistake, he continued. The attention of children has
been fixed to books when it ought not to have been.
Who cannot remember, when a child, looking at a
blacksmith at work or spending an hour in a carpenter's
shop ? Every child likes to see something made, and
likes to make something. A school should bethe most
beautiful place in every town and village — ^so beautiful
that the punishment for undutiful children should be
that they should be debarred from going to school the
following day. In all schools there should be a con-
stant succession of new and delightful things, so that
children could not weary or become indifferent to any-
thing that was beautiful. He considered that it would
be a very good thing if some of the bits of decorative
art which were stored up at South Kensington and
similar museums were lent to the schools throughout
the country for the edification and delight of the
children. There was no place so absolutely depressing
as a museum. There was a better use of art than

436

Appendix

looking at it on a rainy day. Give a child something
to make, and he would be happy^— and a perfectly
happy child would be a perfectly good child. Children
might be taught to do something in wood, something
in leather, in pottery, in furniture, in decorative art,
and in metal-working. The artistic power of every
child was great. The problem of the age was the
noisy boy who would not go to school nor learn his
lessons, but spent his time in throwing stones at
windows. What was the matter with him ? He had
simply discovered that he had hands, and that they
were given him for something. Many people do
nothing with their hands but cover them with kid gloves.
The human hand has marvellous powers. Every child
loved beautiftd things. The taste of a child was often
perfectly faultless. A child knew that what was
beautiful must be good. If such children were taught
the nobility of all handicraft that lesson would be
quite as important as teaching them the population of
Madagascar, or the names of the Saxon kings, or in the
incidents in the private lives of people who never lived.
Open the child*s eyes to see the beauty of land and
sea, of the flight of birds, of the budding of a flower,
and the falling of a leaf, and they will feel it a joy,
and desire to communicate that joy to others — and
almost every noble lesson of Ufe will have been learned.
They will learn to love all that is beautiful and to hate
all that is ugly. Moral tales do not accomplish much
good. The boy who throws a stone does not always
fall into the well, as the tale states. This is soon dis-
covered, and then comes the revolt of life against
literature. Every child cannot be made into an artist.
The lecturer closed his remarks by quoting the words
of " one who loved beauty more than anything else " —
John Keats, who, replying to someone who asked him

437

Appendix

to venerate some principle or other, said : *' I venerate
only the Supreme Being, the memory of great men, and
the principle of Beauty."

OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE IN DUBLIN ON
" THE VALUE OF ART IN MODERN LIFE "

Within the last few years in that country and else-
where there had been a strong development of artistic
feeling and artistic beauty in the houses, not alone of the
wealthy, but of all classes. A better perception of
form and colours and a greater sense of harmony ran
through every room. Certain old ornaments had dis-
appeared. The wax peach no longer ripened in the
glass shade. Cumbrous and useless furniture had been
more and more laid aside. He would endeavour to
show the scientific basis of the movement. Modem
science taught that every organism, whether plant or
animal, sought its proper environment. There was no
reason why mankind should not seek for theirs. Plato in
his " Republic " taught that children should be brought
up in the midst of fair sights and sounds, so that the
soul might be brought naturally into harmony with
the eternal world. Formerly abstract definitions of the
beautiful were aimed at. But the artistic temperament
was better developed by beautiful surroundings — by
giving a perception of every particular beauty. He
was not sure that the real meaning of art was under-
stood. Most people imagined that it was in some way
synonymous with ornamentation. But ornamentation
was merely a branch of art. Art ¥ras primarily a
question of construction, next of adaptability to a
purpose, and lastly of proportion. Within the last

438

Appendix

Um years ornamentation had become an enemy of art.
Some of the most beautifol things were entirely without
ornament. In opjposition to this they saw vases and
articles of pottery beautiful in form, but covered with
meaningless landscapes and sprawling flowers. The
manufacturers said the public would not buy the
things unless they were covered with ornament.
Another thing which hindered artistic development,
was the wrong use of materials. They saw looking-
glasses framed in plush and painted with flowers.
Plush was ddefly good for the delicate folds that it
afforded, and the merit of a looking-glass was that it
reflected its object. But these effects were lost in
such frames. Nature was beautiful in its exquisite
details and in the pageantry of its changing moods.
Nature was an ideal to itself, but, as regarded art, it
was not an ideal at all. Art was not a mere imitation
of natural objects. Decorative art, like music, depended
absolutely on certain laws — on laws of alternation,
symmetry, and series, corresponding more or less to
melody in music; on laws of repetition and mass,
corresponding to harmony. Nature was the rough
material from which art selected. Look at the examples
of old Cditic art, and at Persian, Hindoo, and other
Oriental arts in their general characteristics, except
J^Mmese. In old Celtic art there was no imitation of
a single object in nature. The prohibition in the Koran
of the imitation of natural objects led to an exceedingly
fine school of Mohammedan decorative art. These all
dealt in exquisite lines, beautiful proportions, and lovely
masses of colour. Bad ornamentation had arisen from
the separation of the functions of the artist, the decor-
ator, and the workman. Ornament should never for a
moment disturb outline and proportion, nor should it
add to the apparent weight of ansrthing. With regard

439

Appendix

to materials, when wood was used curves should be
avoided. The curved furniture of the Louis Quat<»xe
period was invariably gilt, so as to look like metal. In
modem English furniture they saw the mahogany
writhing into all sorts of shapes, giving a sense of in-
security and heaviness. But should not art be national ?
He fdt obliged to say No. National art was as im-
possible as national mathematics. Mathematics was
the science of truth and art was the science of the
beautiful. Both were founded on natural laws of
universal application. But the national idea mi^t be
imparted in details. The Greeks made a certain use
of the honeysuckle in the ornamentation of their
buildings, but now, provided the principle of decora-
tion were adhered to, any other flower would do as
well. Therefore they should not furnish thdr houses
as if they wished to please a professor of history. If he
were asked for a definition of what a really beautiful
thing was, he was not sure that his answer would not
be such an object as would harmonise with all other
beautiful objects, no matter of v^iat century or nation.
They would agree because they expressed the same
laws. Between examples of ancient Irish art and
examples from the Alhambra, or from Oriental mosques
of the Byzantine period, there would, therefore, be no
discord. They could select from all these, and the best
furnished house would be the one which could not be
absolutely localised as regarded forms of art. Every-
thing should be in proportion as to colour and form,
and a mere spirit of archaeology should not pievail.
Why was this movement called '* aesthetic '* ? There
was a deeper sense in that word than the merely beauti-
ful. In past ages decorative art was symbolic and ex-
pressive of ideas. Afterwards it became simply im-
pressive, and consequently aesthetic. In the hands of

440

Appendix

the Greeks it became after a time simply impressive,
and in the period of the Renaissance Italian decorative
art took the same direction. Symbolism had a ten-
dency to putrefaction and to the stoppage of growth ;
on the other hand, when the aesthetic impulse came
into play there was a constant growth and admission
of new light. When art was healthy it was constantly
changing in its details. To us in the nineteenth
century the aesthetic side of art had more application
than the symbolic. Anciently symbolism was a means
of conveying ideas in novels, religion, and philosophy,
but, since printing, the enormous increase of books had
almost put an end to that function, and ornamentation
now mainly appealed to the eye — and thereby a
greater amount of beauty was attained. The beauty of
a rose ¥ras not enhanced by a long botanical name.
Decoration was to be distinguished from imaginative
art. Decorative art emphasised its material and made
it more beautiful than before ; imaginative art anni-
hilated its material. They did not regard the canvas
of a picture or the stone of a piece of sculpture. Again,
they could place a piece of decorative art where .^they
liked, but they could not do so with a picture. They
had to hang a picture where they could see it under
certain conditions of light and shade. Decorative art
depended largely on traditions, whereas the art of
the picture or the statue was purely individual. De-
corative art was purely impressive, like music. They
did not ask what a piece of music meant, but how it
affected them. But imaginative art expressed not
merely the facts of nature, but the wonderful power of
the hand and eye of the artist. What chiefly con-
stituted the artist was his power of vision. He thought
that in art schools here there was too much use
of hard outline. The Japanese artists did better by

44«

Appendix

teaching their students to use a soft brush, and also by
making them paint from the shoulder, without any rest
for the wrist. The Greeks discovered wbBt was
beautiful, but the Dutch school of artists were the
first to discover that ugly objects mi^t be made
beautiful. There was no object in life so hideous that
it might not become beautiful under certain conditions
of light and shade. What the artist shotdd do is to
watch for the moment when indifferent objects became
thus transformed. Modem painters were too much in
the habit of taking subjects from history and literature
and of resorting to symbolism. There was also too
great a tendency to special subjects. At a London
exhibition a young artist gained great Mai by a picture
in which he introduced in the foreground three silver
birch-trees. For a while afterwards the public would
have nothing but silver birch-trees. The artist wisely
remonstrated against this, and painted a picture with
trees of a different kind, which he exhibited, and was
informed by a dealer that a gentleman was ready to pay
him his own price for it if only he would put three
silver birch-trees in the foreground. (Here the first
laugh was taken.) The practice of decorative art en-
nobled labour, and contained within itself an enormous
store of economic wealth, owing to the extent to which
the value of the material was enhanced by the work of
the artist. It was always possible for a nation by
artistic power to give to the commonest material
vastiy increased value. There was no reason why we
in Ireland should not do this. There was in all the
Celtic races this power of decoration. Whether they
viewed the remains of ancient art in the Royal Irish
Academy or in the museums of Northern Europe, they
would be struck by the &r greater sense of beauty
evinced in the early Celtic work than in the old English

442

Appendix

art, \i^icfa was deficient in delicacy and sense of pro*
portion. {Applause.) And there was no reason why
they should not show that those perceptions of the
beautiful, and capacities of delicate handling as to hue
and colour, were not dead.

OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE IN DUBLIN ON
" DRESS "

It was strange that, whereas so much attention had
been paid to the decoration of our homes, very little
care had been bestowed on the national dress of our
men and women. No matter how beautiful a house
might be, it should be only a background for the men
and women who dwell in it. The beauty of the house
was abnormal so long as the art of dress was neglected.
When he called it an art he did not exaggerate its im-
portance. To be dressed well requires that one should
be a master of colour and form. The beauty of a dress
consists in its giving expression to the grace and free-
dom of the body. It should suit and yield to its every
motion, and not be a mere prison in which the body
is confined. Before there is any reform in our national
costumes the natural motions and functions of the
body must be better and more widely understood. A
great aid to the general acquiring of that necessary
knowledge would be the teaching of drawing. A desire
to draw is natural ; no boy or girl fails to cover its
lesson book with pictures of its parents and
friends or of the house over the way. Writmg, on the
contrary, is an acquired art, and there is no reason
why children should not be taught drawing as they
are taught writing. They might commence by drawing

443

Appendix

plane figures, squares, or cubes, proceeding afterwards
to the study of the human figure — in the first place from
the casts of the ancient Greek statues. They would
then learn that the waist, for instance, is the most
delicate and graceftd curve in the entire body,and that
it is not necessarily beautiful if it happens to be small.
Nothing is beautiful because it is simply small or laige,
and the waist is beautiful only when it is in perfect
proportion with the other parts of the human figure.
Similarly the foot is beautiful when it gives the idea
of being the firm basis on which the body rests ; and the
hand is not beautiful in proportion to its smallness,
but when its curves and those of the wrist are graceful
and unbroken. The poets, who are generally blamed
for everything (here the first laugh was usually heard),
are probably responsible for the idea that a small
waist is necessarily beautiful. Chaucer and Dunbar
are amongst the guilty : one talks of a lady whose
waist was *^ as small as a willow wand.'* In the same
way, it is almost impossible to take up a novel in whidi
the lady has not extremely small hands and feet.

The child who has learned to draw will know that
the effect of horizontal lines upon the figure is to re-
duce its apparent height, whilst that of vertical lines
is to increase the height. The same principle, as is
well known, holds in the case of a house. If a ceiling
be too high — a fault very common in our modem houses
— it is easy to reduce its seeming height by running any
broad band, such as a dado, horizontally round the
room. If, on the contrary, the ceiling be too low — as
occasionally occurs in very old houses — proportion may
be given by making the leading lines vertical. In
dress, if a lady be too tall, a broad belt or sash lessens
her apparent height ; while, if she happens to be small,
the lines of her dress shoiQd be as much as possiUe

444

Appendix

vertical. A person looking at the fashion plates of the
period of the First French Empire will be struck by
the apparent height of the beautiful ladies of the time.
The cause is that the skirts were lengthened by shorten-
ing the waist. As regards the question of colour, he
should remind them that in decorating a room — ^unless
it was wanted to be a museum — ^they should have
some scheme of colour. The same holds true of dress.
He thought that at most three colours, unless very
exquisitely harmonised, were as many as could be safely
employed, for it should be understood that any con-
trasting colour concentrated attention on a mere detail.
Vivid colours in ribbons or feathers in the head-dress
are dangerous also, because they interfere with the
attention, and attract undue observation. Large checks
should not be worn, as they render any irregularity of
the figure at once apparent. Recently he had gone into
a shop in London to purchase some stamped velvet or
plush. After a lengthened search he was obliged to ask
the shopman to show him something that would not
require a man some ten or twelve feet high to be in
proportion. The figures on all that the shopman had
shown were large enough for the paper of a considerable
building. Anything else, the shopman said, was un-
fashionable. When he mentioned the word ** fashion'*
he named the greatest enemy of art in this as in all
other centuries. It is a giant that puts men in chains.
Art seeks to give expression to individuality ; fashion
insists upon every man doing as every other man. If
there were anytUng beautiful or excellent in fashions
they would not have to be changed every six months.
The Egyptians had preserved their national dress for
nearly 2000 years ; the Greeks maintained theirs for
over 900. With us a young lady spends her pocket-
money buying a bonnet which she wears for a few

44S

Appendix

weeks, to the admiration and rage of her neighbourhood ;
and then comes her dearest friend, who mentions, quite
casually, that nobody wears a bonnet of that shape or
colour now. {LaughUr.) More money is spent on bon-
nets alone than would suffice, if the figures were made
public, to drive the husbands of the kingdom to despair.
{Applause and laughter.) It is not that they are beauti-
ful. Time was when great merchants and nobles
dressed their wives in brocades and cloth of gold.
More money in proportion is expended now, because
fashion changes so often. The economy would indeed
be great if dress could be rendered permanent. In
England, as in every other country, the national
costume was permanent until the end of the sixteenth
century. Catherine de Medicis, who had been accused
of nearly every possible crime, was guilty of the intro-
duction of the corset and the farthingale. The former
was an iron band, very broad, and arranged so as to
be fastened with links and hooks at the back and under
the shoulders. In it the body was iron-bound like an
American trunk. The farthingale was a cage, some-
times of osier, at times strengthened with iron ribs, that
depended from the waist and kept the dress extended
to a monstrous degree. A lady thus attired would
occupy all to herself as much room as would suffice for
a moderate political meeting. {LaugfUer.) The same
fashion may be seen caricatured in Hogarth's works,
and in our time it has been known as the crinoline. It
is now disused, and upon that at least we might con-
gratulate ourselves. But what was the meaning of that
wicked thing known as the dress improver ? {Applause
and lauglUer.) Of course, none of those present were
capable of wearing it, but for the benefit of others he
would point out that its effect is to cut across the curve
of the body just as it becomes beautifuL An ideal

446

Appendix

dress was that of the Athenian woman in the days of
Athenian gloiy, when she was pre-eminent in her arts
and in her philosophy. They borrowed from the
Orient, from which all things have come, a soft variety
of woollen cloth similar to cashmere. The A8S3^ans,
with the Oriental fondness for bright colours, dyc^i their
dress in vivid shades. The Greeks, with more artistic
feeling, discarded the colours and the horizontal lines
of the Assyrian girdle, which they diminished to two
small cords that served to relieve the vertical lines of
the robes by retaining oblique folds in position. The
lecturer described the ancient Greek costume in detail.
Of course, he added, in our colder climate it would be
unsuitable, but two lessons may be learned from the
facts known of it. The first is that as a dress material
woollen doth is superior to any other. It is a mistake
to suppose that woollen textures are of necessity
clumsy and coarse. The woollen stuffs of cashmere
were finer than the finest silk. The other point observ-
able in the costume he had described is that it was un-
divided and unseamed. The beauty of the dress was
entirely dependent upon the manner in which it was
worn. The use of wool as the basis of materials for
dress was greatly recommended by eminent phjrsicians.
It was cool in summer and warm in winter, whilst per-
fectly flexible and light. Its employment in lawn-
tennis, rowing, and cricketing clothes might be instanced
as an example. A cloak with a hood, not intended
merely for an ornament, was a very ancient and most
admirable garment. It was decidedly Irish in very
remote times, as their sculptures in Kilconnell Abbey
proved. The hood should be made to protect the head
from rain — that was its use. A head-dress as at present
worn is rarely of any advantage to the wearer. It
generally assumes the form of a stuffed bird perching

447

Appendix

upon a small piece of tulle. {LaughUr.) Recently he saw
in one of the French journals a drawing of a bonnet,
with the note underneath : " With this st^e the mouth
is worn slightly open." (Laughier.) That was surdy the
ne plus uUra off oHy. {Applause.) Referring to the sub-
ject of male attire, the lecturer declared that the tall top-
hat was as wicked and monstrous as the worst of the
feminine articles of apparel. It was supposed to give
very great respectability on week-days and irreproach-
able orthodoxy on Sundays. (Laughler.) High-heded
boots were next vigorously condemned, and Wilde con-
cluded his lecture by impressing on his hearers that
beauty in dress consisted in the perfect adaptability of
the garments to the needs of the wearer.

448

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CONTENTS
I. Works issued in Book Form—

1. AUTHORISED EDITIONS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND 45 1

2. WORKS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA ONLY . 453

3. WORKS PUBLISHED IN PRIVATELY PRINTED

EDITIONS ONLY ..... 453

II. Magazines AND Periodicals. •453

III. Books CONTAINING Selections -458

IV. Spurious Works ..... 460

V. Translations—

1. FRENCH ...... 461

2. GERMAN ...... 461

3. ITALIAN ...... 463

4. POLISH ...... 463

5. RUSSIAN 463

6. SPANISH ...... 463

7. SWEDISH ...... 463

2r 449

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. WORKS ISSUED IN BOOK FORM
I. Authorised Editions published in England

Ballad of Reading Gaoly The, London : Leonard Smithers.

1898. 1st edition. 800 copies, 2s. 6d. Also 30 copies on
Japanese vellum.

2nd edition. Text revised, 2s. 6d.

3rd edition. 99 copies, signed by the author.

4th, 5th, 6th editions similar to the 2nd edition, 28. 6d.

1899. 7th edition, 2s. 6d. Author's name added on the title-
page.

AU the ab&ue are an hatul-made p<i^.

1900-5. Stereotyped editions on wove paper, all dated 1899.

2S.

Children in Prison^ and other Cruelties of Prison Life. London :
Murdoch & Co.
1898. (Reprinted from The Daily Chronicle as a pamphlet.)
Id.

De Profundis. London : Methuen & Co.

1905. 5s. Also 200 copies on hand-made paper, 21s., and 50
on Japanese vellum, 42s. Daring 1905 six impressions
of the 5s. edition were issued.

Happy Prince and Other Tales^ The, London : David Nutt

1888. 1st edition, 5s. Also 75 copies (65 for sale) with the
illustrations in two states, on large paper.

1889. 2nd edition, 3s. 6d.
1902. 3rd edition, 3s. 6d.
1905. 4th edition, 3s. 6d.

Houu of Pomegranates^ A. London : Osgood, Mcllvaine & Ca

189I. 218.

4S«

Bibliography

Ideal Htuhand^ An, London : Leonard Smithers & Ca

1899. 12 copies on Japanese vellum for presentation; 100
L.P. 2 IS. ; 1000 sm. 4to, 7s. 6d
Imffortance of Being Eamesty The, Leonard Smithers & Ca

1899. The number of copies issued, and the price, the same
as An Ideal Husband.
Inlentums, London : Osgood, Mcllvsune & Co.

1 891. I St edition, 7s. 6d.

1894. 3nd edition, 3s. 6d.
Lady IVindermer^s Fan, London : Elkin Mathews & J(An Lane.

1893. 50 copies L.P., 1 5s., and 500 copies sm. 4to, 7s. 6d.
Lord Arthur Savii^s Crime and Other Stories, Osgood, Mcllvaine

&Ca

189I. 28.

Picture of Dorian Gray^ The, London : Ward, Lock & Co.

1891. 1st edition, 6s. Also 250 copies on L.P., 21s.

1894. 2nd edition, 6s. (Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co.)
Poems, London : David Bogue.

1 88 1. 1st, 2nd, 3rd editions, los. 6d.

1882. 4th, 5th editions, los. 6d.

London : EUdn Mathews & John Lane.

1892. 220 copies (20D for saleX 15s.

Ravenna, Newdigate Prize Poem. Oxford : Thos. Shrimpton &

Son.
1878. IS. 6d. (Genuine original copies of this have the Arms

of Oxford University on the cover and title-page.)
Sedomi, Drame en un acte. Paris: Librairie de PArt Ind^

pendant. London : Elkin Mathews & John Lane.

1893. 600 copies (500 for saleX 5s. Also a limited issue on
hand-made paper.

Salami, Translated by Lord Alfred Douglas. London: EUdn
Mathews & John Lane.

1894. 500 copies, 15s. ; 100 copies L.P., 30s.
Sphinx^ The, London : EUdn Mathews & John Lane.

1894. 250 copies, 42s. ; 25 copies L.P., 105s.
Woman of No Importance^ A, London : John Lane.

1894. The issue was limited to the same numbers as Lady
Windermer^s Fan,

NOTB. — Many of the above were pablished snmiltaDeoiisty in America,
bot pirated reprints are not included in this lisL

45 «

Bibliography

2. Works vvbusbed in America only

Dmck€ss of Padma^ Tke. New York : Privmtely printed for die
antbor.
1883. ao copies.

V€ra\ or^ ike Nikilisis. New York: Privately printed for the
author.
1883. Interieaved acting edition.

Ris€ of Hisiorical Criiiciswi^ The. Sherwood Press, Hartford,
Qmul, U.S.A.
1905. 225 copies.
The pablisher of this work gives no information as to the source
from which he obtained the MS., and its inclusion in this list must
not be taken as a guarantee of its being the work of Oscar Wilde.
Lacking further information, its authenticity should be considered
at least doubtful.

3. Works pubushkd in Privately Printed Editions

ONLY

Harlofs House^ The, London : Mathurin Press, 1904. (This
poem appeared first in some periodical not later than
June 1885, but the original publication has not yet been
traced.)

Impressions of America. Edited by Stuart Mason. Sunderland :
Keystone Press, 1906.

IL MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS

Bibeloty The. (Portland, Maine, U.S.A.)

June 1904. " Poems in Prose."

July 1905. ** Lecture on the English Renaiswnre.**
**Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf: L'Envoi."
Blackwood s Edinburgh Ma/^ieine.

July 1889. "The Portrait of Mr W. H."
Burlington^ The,

January 1881. "The Grave of Keats."

Centennial MagoMine^ The. (Sydney.)

February 1889. « Symphony in Yellow."

453

Bibliography

Century Guild Hobby Horse^ The,

July 1886. " Keats' Sonnet on Blue."

Chameleon^ The,

December 1894. *' Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of
the Young."

Camhill Booklet, The, (Boston, U.S.A.)

October 1900. " The Ballad of Reading Gaol."

Court and Society ReineWy The,

February 23, March 2, 1887. "The Canterville Ghost"
May 1 1, 18, 25, 1887. '* Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. A Story

of Cheiromancy."
December 13, 1887. " Un Amant de Nos Jours."

Daily Chronicle^ The.

July 2, 1890. " Dorian Gray."

May 28, 1897. "The Case of Warder Martin. Some Cruel-
ties of Prison Life."

March 24, 1898. '' Don't Read This if You Want to be Happy
To-day."

Dramatic RevieWy The.

January 23, 1886. '' Sonnet on the Recent Sale by Auction of
Keats' Love Letters."

Dublin University Magazine^ The.

November 1875. " Chorus of Cloud Maidens."
January 1876. " From Spring Days to Winter." (For Music)
March 1876. *' Graffiti d'ltalia. L San Miniato." (June 15.)
June 1876. "The Dole of the King's Daughter." (For a

painting.)
September 1876. " AiAtvov, olXxyov ciiri, rb 8'c5 vucarw."
July 1877. "The Grosvenor Gallery."

Eclectic Magazine^ The. (New York.)

February 1889. " The Decay of Lying : A Dialogue."
Augiist 1889. "The Portrait of Mr W. H."
April 1 891. " The Soul of Man under Socialism."

El Mercuric de Am/rica.

December 1898. " Balada de la Carcel de Reading." (Spanish
by Dario Herrera.)

English Illustrated Magagine^ The.
January 1889. " London Models."

454

Bibliography

Farimgktiy Review^ The.

January i, 1889. " Pen, Pencil, and Poison : A Study."
February i, 1891. *'The Soul of Man under Socialism."
March i, 1891. **A Preface to ^Dorian Gray.'"
July I, 1894. " Poems in Prose."
Green Room^ The. (Routledge's Christmas Annual.)

i88a " Sen Artysty ; or, the Artist's Dream." (Translated
from the Polish.)
Humboldi Library of Science, The. (New York.)

January 1892. '* The Soul of Man under Socialism."
In a Good Cause.

1885. " Le Jardin des Tuileries."
Irish Monthly y The,

September 1876. "The True Knowledge."
February 1877. " Lotus Leaves."
June 1877. " Salve Satumia Tellus."
July 1 877. " The Tomb of Keats."
December 1877. " n^in-09 *ATfwyrros."
April 1878. "Magdalen Walks."
KoUabos. Trinity College, Dublin.

Trinity Term, 1876. " Uti^ieviiov •Epcrros •Av«os.' ("The

Rose of Love, and with a Rose's Thorns.")
Michaelmas Term, 1876. " Qprfvi^ia.'* (Eur. Hec, 444-483.)
Hilary Term, 1877. "A Fragment from the Agamemnon of
iEschylos."

"A Night Vision."
Michaelmas Term, 1877. "Wasted Days." (From a picture

painted by Miss V. T.)
Hilary Term, 1879. "La Belle Marguerite." Ballade du

Moyen Age.
Michaehnas Term, 1879. "Ave I Maria."
La Plume. (Paris.)

December 15, 1900. " U Rossignol et U Rose." (French by
Stuart Merrill.)
Lad/s Pictorial^ The.

Christmas, 1887. "Fantaisies D^oratives— i. Le Panneau*

2. Les Ballons."
Christmas, 1888. "The Young King."
Uppincotfs Monthly Magasine.

July 189a " The Picture of Dorian Gray."

455

Bibliography

Uteraiure.

December 8, 190a ^ Theocritus."
Month and CatkoUc Review^ The.

September 1876. ^ Graffiti d' Italia.* (An>na« Lago Maggiore.)

Nineteenth Century^ The.

May 1885. " Shakespeare and Stage Costume."

January 1889. " The Decay of Lying : A Dialogue."

July, September 1890. "The True Function and Value of

Criticism; with Some Remarks on the Importance of

Doing Nothing : A Dialogue."

Notes and Q^eries.

August I, 1903. '* The Thames Nocturne of Blue and Gold."

Our Continent. (Philadelphia.)

February 15, 1882. "Impressions — u Lejardin. 2.LaMer."

PaU Mall Gazette, The.

October 14, 1884. "On Woman's Dress."

November 11, 1884. "More Radical Ideas upon Diess

Reform."
February 21, 1885. " Mr Whistler's Ten CClock."
February 28, 1885. " The Relation of Dress to Art A Note

in Black and White on Mr Whistler's Lecture."
September 20, 25, 1894. " The Ethics of Journalism."
October 2, 1894. '* The Green Carnation."

Papyrus, The, (Cranford, U.S.A.)

May 1905. " From the ' Ballad of Reading GaoV and from
*DeProfundis.'"
Q^een, The, The Ladys Newspaper.

December 8, 1888. " English Poetesses."
Reynold^ Newspaper.

May 14, 1905. "The Harlot's House."
Sounder^ Irish Daily News.

May 5, 1879. " Grosvenor Gallery." (First Notice.)
Scots Observer, The.

July 12, August 2, 16, 1890. " Mr Wilde's Rejoinder." (Letters
on " Dorian Gray.")
Seaside Library. (New York.)

January 19, 1882. " Lecture on the English Renaissance."
Shaksperean Show-Book.

1 884. " Under the Balcony."

4S6

Bibliography

Socuty.

Summer Number, 1885. ** Roses and Rue."

Speaker^ The,

February 8, 1890. "A Chinese Sage."
March 22, 1890. " Mr Pater's Last Volume."
December 5, 1891. '* A House of Pomegranates."

Spirit LamPy The, (Oxford.)

December 6, 1892. "The New Remorse."

February 17, 1893. " The House of Judgment"

June 6, 1893. "The Disciple."
Tablet, The.

December 8, 1900. " The True Knowledge."
Time,

April 1 879. ** The Conqueror of Time."

July 1879. " The New Helen."
Truth,

January 9, 1890. " Reply to Mr Whistler."
wJ/s and Strays, (Oxford.)

June 1879. " Easter Day."

March 1880. " Impression de Voyage."
Wilshir^s Magazine, (Toronto.)

June 1902. " The Soul of Man." (Selections.)
Womates World, The,

November, December 1887 ; January, February, March 1888.
" Literary and Other Notes."

November 1888. "A Fascinating Book.

December 1888. "A Note on Some Modem Poets."

January to June 1889. " Some Literary Notes."
World, The,

June II, 1879. "To Sarah Bernhardt."

July 16, 1879. " Queen Henrietta Maria ( Charles /., Act iii,y*

January 14, 1880. " Portia."

August 2$, 1880. "Ave Imperatrix I A Poem on England."

November 10, 1880. "Libcrtaiis Sacra Fames."

March 3, 1881. " Impression de Matin."

November 14, 1883. Telegram to Whistler.

February 25, 1885. Letter to Whistler.

November 24, 1886. Note on Whistler.

May 25, 1887. " Lady Alroy."

June 22, 1887. ''The Model Millionaire."

457

Bibliography

III. BOOKS CONTAINING SELECTIONS FROM THE
WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE

Ballades and Rondeaus^ Chants Royal^ Sestinas^ VillanelUs^ &*c.
Selected, with Chapter on die Various Forms, by Gleesoo
White. London : Walter Scott, 1887.
Villanclle— " Theocritus."
Best of Oscar Wilde^ The, Selected by Oscar Harrmann. Edited
by W. W. Massie, Avon Press, New York, 1905.
"Hflas!"
"The Sphinx."
Prose Extracts.

'*The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
Short Poems.
Booh of Jousts^ A, Edited by James M. Lowry. London:
Leadenhall Press, E.C. (n.d.)
"A Night Vision."
Booh'Song, An Anthology of Poems of Books and Bookmen from
Modem Authors. Edited by Gleeson White. London :
Elliot Stock, 1893.
"To my Wife : With a Copy of my Poems."
" With a Copy of the * House of Pomegranates.' "
Dublin Verses by Members of Trinity College. Edited by H. A.
Hinkson. London : EUdn Mathews, 1895.
" RequiescaL"
"The True Knowledge."
"Salve Satumia Tellus."
"Theocritus."

" The Dole of the King's Daughter."
Epigrams and Aphorisms, Selected by George Henry Sargent.

Boston : John W. Luce, 1905.
Essays^ Criticisms and Reviews, London : Privately Printed, 1901.
Literary Notes, etc, contributed to The Womatis IVorld,
1887-9.
Every Day of the Year, Edited by Jas. L. and Mary K. Ford.
New York : Dodd, Mead & Co.
"At the Grave of Keats."
" Queen Henrietta Maria."
"The Grave of SheUey."
" Louis Napoleon."

4S8

Bibliography

Ccidem Gleams of Thought Edited by S. P. Linn. Chicago:
A. C. McClurg & Co.
" At the Grave of Keats."

Golden Poems. Edited by Francis F. Browne. Chicago : A. C.
McClurg & Co.
"RequiescaL"
Serenade, ** The Western Wind is Blowing Fair.**

Household Book of Poetry^ The. Edited by Charles A. Dana.
New York : D. Appleton & Co.
"Ave Imperatrix!"

Odes from the Greek Dramatists. Translated into Lyric Metres by
English Poets and Scholars. Edited by Alfred W.
Pollard. London : David Stott, 1890.
"Nubes." ("Chorus of Cloud Maidens," from Aristo-
phanes.)

Oscariana. Epigrams. Privately Printed. London: Arthur
Humphreys, 1895.

Poems and Lyrics of Nature. Edited, with an Introduction, by
Edith Wingate Kinder. London : Walter Scott Limited.

(1894.)
"Les Silhouettes."
" La Fuite de la Lune."
"LeReveillon."

Poets and the Poetry of the Century^ The. Edited by Alfred H.
Miles. Vol. viii. (1891.) "Robert Bridges and Con-
temporary Poets." London : Hutchinson & Co.

"Ave Imperatrix!"

"Apologia."

" Requicscat."

" On the Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters."

" Libertatis Sacra Fames."

"To Milton."

"H^las!"

Sebastian Afelmoth (Oscar Wilde). London : Arthur L. Hum*
phreys, 1904-
Maxims and Epigrams.
"The Soul of Man."

459

Bibliography

Satmets of this Century, Edited and Ammgedf with a Critical
Introduction on the Sonnet, by William Sharp. London :
Walter Scott, 1886.
** Libertatis Sacra Fames."
** On the Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters.*

ViOarian Anthology. Edited by £. C. Steadman. New York :
Houghton, Miffin & Co.
" Ave Imperatrix I "

VoiUy Speech^ and Gesture, New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
"A Woman of No Importance." (Scene: Gerald and his
Mother.)

Wemer^s Readings and Recitations, No. 4. All-Round Recita-
tions. Compiled and Arranged by Elsie M. Wilbor.
New York : Edgar S. Werner Publishing Ca 1891.
" Guido Ferranti." (Scene fix>m " The Duchess of Padua.")

IV. SPURIOUS WORKS

The following works have been fraudulently attributed to Oscar
Wilde, generally by unscrupulous publishers : —

The Shamrock, (A poem published in The Sunday Sun about
September 1894. Wilde repudiated the authorship in his
letters to The Pall Mall GaxetU on "The Ethics of
Journalism.")

The Priest and the Acolyte, (Reprinted from The Chameleon^
Vol. I, No. I, December 1894. The real author was an
undergraduate at Oxford.)

What Never Dies, (An English translation of '* Ce Qui ne Meurt
pas," by Barbey d'Aurevilly. Published in Paris about 1902.)

The Satyricon of Petronius, (A translation attributed to Wilde by
the publisher in Paris who also issued ^ What Never Dies.")

Ego Te Absolvo^ Old Bishof^s^ and The Orange Peel, (Three
stories published in an American magazine, over Wilde's name,
shortly after his death. They have been translated into
French, and published by P. V. Stock in a volume containing
'* Lord Arthur Savile's Crime " and the ^w^ tales included in
"The Happy Prince." The translator, M. Albert Savine,
however, in a note says : " Nous les traduisons ici bien que
I'authenticit^ nous en paraisse ^minemment suspecte.")

460

Bibliography

V. TRANSLATIONS

1. French

BaUade de la GeSle de Reading. By Henry D. Davray. Paris :
Society du Mercure de France, 1898.

De ProJundU. VxMA€ de lettres torites de la Prison par Oscar
Wilde k Robert Ross, Suivi de La Ballade de la Ge61e de
Reading. Same translator and publishers. 1905.

Iniemtums, By J. Joseph-Renaud. Paris: P. V. Stock, 1905.

(Pages 279-294 contain " Phrases et Philosophies k I'usage de

la Jeunesse.**)
La Maison des Grenades, By George Khnop£ Paris : Editions de

la Plume, 1902.
Le Crime de Lord Arthur SaviU. By Albert Savine. Paris :

P. V. Stock, 1905.
Le Portrait de Dorian Gray. (By Eugene Tardiea and Geoiges

Maurevert) Paris: Albert Savine, 1895. ^^^ Edition,

Paris : P. V. Stock, 1904.
Le Portrait de Monsieur W, H. By Albert Savine. Paris:
P. V. Stock, 1906.

2. German

Bunbury (**The Importance of Being Earnest")* By Felix Panl
Greve. Minden : J. C. C. Bruns* Verlag. (N.D.) (1903.)

Canterville Ghost, By Anne Marie von Boehn. Munich : Max

von Boehn, 1897.
Das Bildnis des Mr IV, H,^ and Lord Arthur Saviles Verbrechen,

By Felix Paul Greve. Minden in Westf. : J. C. C. Bnms*

Verlag, 1904.
Das Granatapjelhaus, By F. P. Greve. Leipzig : Im Insel- Verlag,

1904.
Das Sonnettet^obUm des Herm W. M, By Johannes Ganlke.

Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr. (N.D.) (1902.)

De Projundis, Au^eichnungen und Briefe Ausdem Zuchthaus in
Reading. By Max Meyerfeld. Beriin : Verlag S. Fischer,
1905.

461

Bibliography

Der glUckHche Prinz imd andere Enahlungen. By Jdhannes
Gaulke. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903.

Der gtUckUche PHns Modeme Marchen. By Else Otten.
Leipzig : Heimann Seemann Nachfolger, 1905.

Der SoziaUsmus und die Seeie des Menscken^ and other Essajrs.
By Hedwig I^chmann and Gustav Landauer. Berlin : Karl
Schnabel, 1904*

Die Ballade vom ZuMhause su Reading, By Wilhelm Scfadler-
mann. Leipzig : Im Insel- Verlag, 1903.

DieHerzogin von PaditcL Etne Tragddie aus dem 16. Jahrhundert.

By Max Meyerfeld. Berlin: Egon Fleischel & Ca (nj>.)

(1904-)
Dorian Gray. By Johannes Gaulke. Leipzig : Verlag von Max

Spohr. (N.D.) (1901.)

Dorian Grc^s Biidnis, By F. P. Greve. Minden : J. C. C. Bmns*

Verlag. (N.D.) (1903.)
Ein idealer Gatte, By Isidore Leo Pavia and Hermann Freih. v.

Teschenbeig. Leipsg : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903.

Eine Frau ohne Bedeutung. Same translators and publishers,
1902.

Ernst Sein. Eine triviale Kom6die fiir seri5se Leute. By Her-
mann Freih. v. Teschenberg. Leipzig: Verlag von Max
Spohr, 1903.

Fingerzeige. By F. P. Greve. Minden : J. C. C. Bruns* Verlag.

(N.D.) (1903.)

Inteniionen. By Ida and Arthur Roessler. Leipzig: Friedricfa
Rothbarth, 1905.

Lady Windermere s Packer. Das Drama eines guten Weibes. By
Isidore Leo Pavia and Hermann Freih. v. Teschenberg.
Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1902.

Lehren und SpriUke and Gedichte in Prosa. By Franz Blei in
^ In Memoriam Oscar Wilde." Leipzig : Insel- Verlag, 1904.

Salome. Drame in einem Aufzuge. By Isidore Leo Pavia and
Hermann Freih. v. Teschenberg. Leipzig : Verlag von Max
Spohr, 1903.

Salome. Tragoedie in einem Akt By Hedwig Tiflrhmann.
Leipng : Im Insel- Verlag, 1903.
462

Bibliography

Sahme, Drama in einem Aufoig. By Dr Kiefer. No. 4497
Universal-Bibliothek. Leipzig : Verlag von Philipp Redam,
jnn. (N.D.)

Oscar Wilde, By Hedwig Lachmann. (Contains translations of
^ The Harlot's House," and other poems.) Berlin and Leipzig :
Verlegt bei Schuster & Loeffler, 1905.

3. Italian

De Pro/umUs, Seguito da Alcune Lettere inedite di O. Wilde.
Versione Italiana di Olga Bicchierai. Venezia: S. Rosen,
Editore, 1905. (This edition contains the letters from prison
in EngHsh,)

Dorian Gray was published as a serial in a newspaper. JntenHons
has also been published.

4. Polish

Sahme. Dramat W I Akcie. Przeklad Jadwigi Gasowskiej.
Munich : Dr J. Marchlewski & Co., 1904.

5. Russian

De ProfiauUs. 1905.

Salome. Translated by the Baroness Rodoshefsky, 1905.

6. Spanish

Baiada de la Cartel de Reading, By D. H. (Dario Herrera of
Buenos Ayres). £1 Mercurio de America, December
1898.

7. Swedish

De Profundis, By Anna Lamberg. Stockholm : Wahlstr6m &
Wtdstrands F5rlag, 1905.

Dorian Grays Portrait. By N. Selander. Stockholm: Albert
Bonniers Forlag, 1905.

463

Bibliography

Lognens Forfall och Andn Uppsatser. By Edv. ADonaiL Stodc-
holm : P. A. Norstedt & Sfiners Foriag, 1S95.

Lord Arthur SavU^s brott en studie af plikten, and Spokei Pa
CanUrvitte en hylo-idealistisk saga. By Michael Gripen-
berg and Ernst von Wendt Helsingfivs ; Forlags A. B.
Helios, 1905.

Salome Soigspd i en Akt By Edv. Alkman. Stockholm:
Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1895.

Spoket pa CanUnnlU och andra Noveller och Sagor. By Ernst
Lundqoist Stockholm : Albert Bonniers Fdrlag, 1906.

Note. — This list of trsnsUtions does not profess to be complete. It is
compiled mainly from, the writer's own collection.

Several editions of many of the works have been issaed» hot the date of
the first edition is given whenever possible.

464

INDEX

Adam, Paul, 287 ; cited, 403-404
Msihtiic Movement, 163-166, 246
Alcohol, 11-12,335-339
Anderson, Mary, 235
Archer, William, dted, 238
Art, Wilde's attitude towards, 379,

381-382, 409
AtMenaum^ Wilde's work reviewed

in, 183186, 308, 3iS-3«7. 327-

328,330

"Ballad op Rbading Gaol,"

411-414
BaliM, 39, 233-236
Baudelaire, Charles, 40, 96, 238,

268
Bauer, Henri, 404, 419
Bernhardt, Sarah, 180, 181, 229,

293. 362-363
Bogue, David, 172
BookmoHt ** The Picture of Dorian

Gray " reviewed in, 308-310
Bcsi&m Evemng Transcript quoted,

203-205
Bourget, Paul, 242, 342

Cab- DRIVERS, 88-89

Caine, Hall, cited, 337*338

Calvinism, 147-148

Carlisle, Lord, 19

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 163 not€

Carson. Edward, 5. 115-116. 354

"Case of Warder Martin. The."

280-281. 409-410
Child. Theodore, quoted, 225-226.

229

2 C

465

Qarke, Sir Edward. 363-364
Colum, Ptodraic. cited, 293
Cook. E. T.. quoted. 128-129
Coquelin cadet, 197
Corkran, Miss, quoted. 71-72
Crawley. Ernest, quoted. 372-373
Currie. Lady, quoted, 411 -41 2

Doify CkrotmU, WiMe's letters to.

280-281. 310.311. 409-411
Daily Tiligrapk, WUliam WUde 00

staff of. 275-276; quoted. 322
Daudct. Alphonse. 231-232. 287.

324
"De Profundis" quoted. 7, 121.

146-147. 353? cited. 144. 153,

365> 415; examination of. 371-

373
De Goncourt. Edmond. 227-229
De risle-Adam. VilUers. 287. 291
De R^gnier. Henri. 2&4; quoted.

154. 285.288. 343-344 ; cited,

403404
De Wysewa. T^odor. 344
Dickens, Charles, 77
Donoghue. John. 216-218
Downing. Miss Ellen. 48
Dowson. Ernest. 405
Dublin Royal Victoria Eye and

Ear Hospital. 15-18
DuMin University Rmno quoted.

261-263
•• Duchess of Padua. The." 235-238.

astii 9tCt4
Dufly. Sir C. Gavan. 46-51. 63.

67-70
Dupoiricr, M., 417-418, 420-422

Index

Elgbk, AmcHDBAOON. 36-37
Elgee. Jane Franoesca. See Wilde,

Lady
Elgce. Judge. 38
Emmet, Robert, 377
MngUsk lUustraUd M^gaatu,

Wilde's coQtribatioDS to, 374

Figures 4i Canuth^ quoted, 285-

388
Frtemm^s Jomrmtt^ 363 ; quoted,

360-261
Furnisi, Hany, 39
Fynn, Miss (Mrs Thomas Wikk),

8,9

GiDB, And&A, 239, 412
Goethe quoted, 32, 33
Gough dted, 337-338
Greaves, Dr Robert, ll
Guggenheim, 137
Gunn, Michael, 260^ 261

Hamilton, Miss, quoted, 74-77
Hamilton, Walter, quoted, 156,

208, 218-219; dted, 132, 135,

163-164
** Happy Prince and Other Tales,

The," 259.260, 304
" Harlot's House, The," 238-239
Harris, Fiank, 297
Harvard students, 202-205
Healy, Father, dted, 28-29
Hedonists, 340-341
Henley, W. E., 311
"House of Pomegranates, The,"

259-260, 304
Howdl, 179
Hugo, Victor, 232
Husted, Mr, 218*219

'• Idbal Husband, An," 327
** Importance of Being Earnest,
The," 3^332

" Intentions " quoted, 98-99 ; dted,
106, 138; translation of^ mto
French, 231, 289; appcedation
of, 303 ; Pater's criticism of, 309

Ireland — census. Sir William
Wilde's work on, 19; National
movement (1847), 46, 48-50, 52-
62 ; Revolution of 1798, 37

Irish Momtkfy, 142, 144, 145

Irishmen, dmracteristics of, 295,

375
Irving, Henry, 195-198

" Jacta Alba Est," 49-50^ 52-62,
68

Joseph- Renaud, Jean, 294; dted,
231, 284, 288 ; quoted, 289-393

Journalism, Wilde's attitude to-
wards, 374-378

Kbats, 143-144
Kelly, Miss Eva Mary, 48
Kingsbury, Miss (Mrs Elgee), 38
Kutabos^ 140-141

La Jbunbssb, Ernbst, dted, 91,

ao8, 376 ; quoted, 397-398, 420
''lAdy Windermere's Fan," 312-

313. 319-326
Langtry, Mrs, 212
Le fomrnal^ 278
Lc Roux, Hugues, 344
Lectures by Wilde—

Advertisements of, 246-248

** Decorative Art," 207, 209, 211

"Dfcss," 260, 443-448

" The English Renaissance," 193,
207, 264, 427-432

*'The House Beautiful," 311,
245. 251, 253-254, 432-438

"The Vahie of Art in Modem
Life," 260, 438-443
L^fpmneifs Mmtkly Misgnim. 504
Uoyd, Constance. Su ^^de, Mrs

466

Index

"Lord Aithw SavQc^* Crime and

Other Stories," 3«5-3»9
•* Los in Tencbris," 263

M-CXuES, Sir Robert, 38
Mi*Cl9tr^s MagOMine^ 277
Mahftfiy, I*rof., 150.152
MaUann^ St^phane, 287
Mangan, Clarence, 41
Mamrin, Rev. Charles, 38-46
Meningitis, 300
Mejerfeld, Dr Max, 230-238, ama

iM/#, 425
Mifbean, Octave, quoted, 344*345
Monaco, Princess of, 297
Marmng HgrM (HaUfitt, N.S.),

quoted, 2II-2I2

NaHom^ 46-48

Naiian (New York), quoted, 199.

900,4^-432
Nature, Wilde's attitude towaids,

97-100
New Hedonists, 340-341
Ifgw York Herald^ interriew in,

«93-»95
New York fF<9rA/ quoted, 198- 199
Nicolt, Dr Robertson, 308
Ninettomih Centmy^ 208, 411
pjydau^ajdted, 3J6-337

\«
O'DONOOHUB, D. J., 36, 41, 77,

"7
O'Flyn, Miss (Mrs Ralph Wilde),

8
Ormsb3r, Sir Charles, 38
Oscar, King of Sweden, 84
Ouselej, Gideon, 9
Ooseley, Gen. Sir Ralph, 9
Ottselcy, Sir Ralph, 8
Otiseley, SirWm.,8-9
Oxford poet friend, 215-216

Oxford UnivCTsity— Charactcfistics
of, t2t-i23; Rnridn's influettce
at, 125-130

PtiJi MaU GqmHH^ Wilde's oomribu-
tions to, 259, 274

Psris — liteiary sensibilities in,
230-231 ; Wilde's honeymoon in,
257-258 ; estimate of his conveisa-
donal powers in, 285-293 ; visits
to(i892-95), 342 ; tost days in, 418

Pater, Walter, 309-310

" Patience," 208-209

"Picture of Dorian Gray, The,"
65-66, 304-3x0

Poe, E. A., 212, 238

" Poems," I73-X75t 180-189

Pond, Major, 190, 200-201, 219

Portora, loi cf m^. , 1 14

" Portrwt of Mr W. H., The," 361

Fmuh^ " Poems " reriewedin, 187-
188 ; quoted, 221-222 ; dted, 321,

Punctuation, 273

QUBINSBKRRY, MaRQUBSS OF, 5,

"6,35a-3S4

Ravbnna, 155-157

Reading Goal warder, account of

Wilde by, 386-402 ; letter from

Wilde to, 405-406
Red Island property, 242-243
Reid, Wemyss, 269
Religion, Wilde's attitude towaids,

146.147, 37i-37«» 378381, 383,

384
Rollinat, 243

Ross, Robert, 4X5-4I7» 4^1, 4^3
Richards, J. Morgan, dted, 207
Ruskin, John, 125-130, 132133

St /amis s CaztUi quoted, 298-299
"Salom^/* 362, 424-425

467

Index

Sugent, John, 242

Saturday jRgviiWf "Poems" re-
viewed in, 181-182

Sc9is Ohs$rvtr {Natiamal Oiserwir),
WUde's letters to, 311

Scott, Qement, quoted, 32a

Sebastian Melmoth, 38, 144, 300,

Shakespeare's Sonneto, 360

Shelley, P. B., 378

Smitheis, Leonard, 414

Solomons, 179

*'Soul of Man under Socialism,

The," 129-131, 259, 302
Speranza. See Wilde, Lady
"Sphynx, The,*'239
Steele, Rct. Wm., 105
** Story of an Unhappy Friendship,

The," quoted, 7273, 241, 278

noU, 335, 34S-346
Swinburne, A., 230^ 232

Tanagra statuettes, i $1-152

Teny, Ellen, 174-176

Thackeray quoted, 39

Theatre quoted, 330-331

•*Thomasine,"48

TVnicr, Wilde's work reviewed in,

3a7,330
Truth quoted, 322-323; Wilde's

work reviewed in, 331
Trinity College, Dublin, 112-115,

120-121
"Twenty Years in Paris" quoted,

415

Ungbrn - Sternberg, Baroness
Isabella von, dted, 355-356

"Vera," 189, 221-222
Vedn, Hermann, 264
Voltaire, 378

Whistler, 171
Whitman, Walt, 212, 214

Wilde, Lady (Jane Fmnisesca Elgee)
(mother), fiunily of, 35-38 ; birth,
37 ; literary abilities, 30-32 ; coo-
tributkns to TUNatiom^ 46-4S;
" Jacta Aka Est," 49-50, 52-62,
68; nationalism, 64-65; mar-
riage, 18; desire that seoond
child should be s girl, 5-6, 83 ;
daughter of, 90 ; toleration of her
husband's infidelities, 27-28 ; her
salon, 70 ; in Park Street, 72 ; in
OaUey Street, 70, 74-76; liter-
ary works, 78-79; contribntions
to TU Waoiadi Worlds 270-271 ;
pension of, 20, 64 ; Oscar's rela-
tions with, 6-7, 284, 368, 375 ;
ai^Moves Oscar's remaining in
England, 366; i^qpearance of,
71-74; Sehwaarmmi^ 33-34, 36,
84 ; tendency to self-ddusion, 35 ;
clinging to youth, 73 ; quoted on
Sir Wm. Wilde's literary positioo,

^5
¥^lde, Oscar Fli^ O'Flaherty
Wills—
Corwr, cArpmaUfgical stfumce of
—birth, 3-5, 83; names, 83-
86; home, 86-87, 95*96;
school, 92, loi €t seq, ; un-
popularity with schoolfellows,
104-105; gold medallist, 112;
foreign travel, 92-93 ; at Trinity
CoU^e, Dublin, 1 12 - 1 15 ;
Berkeley gold medallist, 90-21,
117; enters Bfagdalen College,
Oxford, 121 ; Rnskin's lectures
and influence, 125-130; aesthe-
tidsm, 133-138; ragging. 138;
visits to Italy. 145-146; visit
to Greece, 149-154; success in
the schools, 124; First Class
and Newdigate Prise, 155;
literary work, 140-146; in
London, 159, 166-169, 171-

468

Index

Wilde, Oxn^-^eouHmted

173; aesthetic costame, 160;
unpopularity, 168-169; publi-
cation of "Poems." 173-175,
180-189; American tour, 189-

190* 193-^10. 219-M3. MS-
227; Chickering Hall lecture,
198-200; Boston lecture, 202-
206; Omaha, Louisville, and
Denver, 207-210 ; Cftnada and
Nova Scotia, 210-219 ; Monc-
ton Y.M.C.A., 218-219; in
Paris, 224-243; financial di£Ei-
culties, 242-246; returns to
England, 243; lectures in
London, 244 ; in the provinces,
245-253; marriage, 254-257;
honeymoon in Paris, 257-258 ;
home in Chelseay 258 ; journal-
istic work, 259; £siry stories,
259-260; financial difficulties,
264, 305; birth of his sons,
264; editor of Tki fVoman's
World, 266-273 ; other journal-
istic work, 273-274; "Lord
Arthur Savile's Crime," 315-
319 ; " Lady Windermere's
• Fan," 319*326; "A Woman
of No Importance," 326-329;
"An Ideal Husband," 327;
"The Importance of Being
Earnest," 329.334; visits to
Paris, 342; the Queensberry
trial, 5, 116, 352*354 J arrested,
354-355 ; first trial, 357 ; goes
to Oakley Street, 358; sale at
Tite Street, 359-361; second
trial and sentence, 278, 368;
in prison, 370-373 ; visit firom
his wife, 374 ; conversations in
prison, 377-383. 386-402 ; rela-
tions with fellow-prisoners, 383-
384; "De Profundis," se$
thai tUU\ released, 403; at

Wilde, Oscar — contintud

Bemeval, 404; "BaUad of
Reading Gaol," 411 -414; fin-
ancial stra)ts, 278-281, 415 ; at
Naples, 415 ; in Paris, 417-420;
last daysl 420-422; baptised
into Roman Catholic Church,
148, 416, 421 ; death, 422 ;
tomb, 422-423
Characttristics —
iEsthetidsm, iii ^
Ambition, 177
Anarchism, 161, 178
Artificiality, 233
Qevemess, 91, 103. no
Conversational powers, and

love of Ulking, 32, 284-295,

297-301, 409, 419
Courage, 139, 244
Courtesy, 180-181, 205, 211,

296. a99-300
Detail, carefulness as to, 273,

414
Dignity, 205, 244, 3^7
Dogmatism, 253
Energy, 294
Family feeling, 6-7, 284, 368,

375376
Generosity, 282-284, 383-384,

404,420
Geniality and kindliness, 214,

241,309

Gentleness, 385

Honour in money matters, 282

Indolence, 140

Inherited tendencies, 80-81

Inventive faculty, 315-316

Linguistic fiu:ility, 30

Magnetic influence, 240

Mathematics, incapacity for,

103.104, 112;
Optimism, 301-302
Pessimism, 140
Practicality, 34

469

Index

Pride and anoganoe, I7Q» 282,

319> 3S3
Repose of manner, 213
Satire and repartee, powers of,

105.107, 170.171, 220,297
Self-aocnsadon, habit of^ 295,

3Wf 377; self-confidence, 319
Superstitionsness, 418
Voice, 293. 295
Yoatfa, ardour for, 4, 73, 81
MiscelUmea —
Appearance, 29, 104, 196, 211,

«5. «33. U% 251, 289, 343
Book read in youth, allc^^ed

influence of, 65.66

I>o»f 109. a33-«34. 250. 269-

270, 289, 343
Epileptiform malady, 34, 181,

307» 325, 334, 337-339
Estimates, 91, 208, 342, 426
— among European Jews,
131-132 — German, 424 —
Italian, 424
Handwriting, 355-356
Irish nationality, concealment

of, 86
Names, 38, 8386, 141, 144,

404.405
Philosophy, 301
Religions views, 146-147. 37i-

372. 378-381. 383. 384
Smoking, addiction to, 269,

3a4-3a5» 334
Social celebrities,! preference

for, 74, 177-178
Words affected, 210-211
Wilde, Mrs (wife), marriage of,
254-257; contributions to The
IVomat^s IVarid^ 270-271 ; copy
of << Lord Arthur Sarile's Crime "
inscribed to, 317; visits her

WUde,]

husband in gaol, 374; tells him
of his mother's death, 7, 374;
death and estimate oi, 375

^nnide, Ralph (great-gcundfiOber),
7-8

Wilde, Dr ThomasCgrcat-nncle), 8, 9

Wilde, William (brother), ai school,
108-110; on Daily Ttiigr^
staff, 275.276; Oscar's relations
with, 89, 109, 167. 375376;
supplied with story plots by Oscar,
315-316; otherwise meotiooed,
36. 7Pi 358. 366-367

¥rUde, Sir William Robert Wills
(fiither), fiunily o^ 7-9; eariy
years, 9-10; medical stndies, 11 ;
illness, 11 ; medical suooesi, 13-
15 ; voyage in the OwMdkr, 14 ;
founds Eye and Ear Hoqntal, 15-
18 ; publicatioB on Dean Swift,
18; marriage, 18; visits Stock-
holm, 18; knii^ited, 18-20;
Cunningham medallist, 90^ 80;
as landlord, 21-22 ; literary work,
22, 24, 80 ; foreign appreciations
of, 23.24; Oscar's attitude
towards, 6; diaracteristics, 25,
27.29 ; death and faneral, 26

Wills, W. G., 85

« Woman Covered with Jewds,
The," 360

" Woman of No Importance, A,"

326-327
IVawuues IV^ld, 266^3
iV0rld quoted, 225.226, 254-255;

dted, 243 ; Wilde's oootributioos

to, 259, 274

Xad, Fbrnand, 278-279

Yatbs, Edmund, 174, 179-180;
dted, 243; quoted, 254.255

470

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